Hamilton Peter F.. Neutronium Alchemist - Conflict

   “Have you confirmed the number of people in the courtroom?”
   “We’re missing twelve people, sir. But we know at least four of those are dead, and the others sustained some injuries. And Hewlett claims he terminated one of the possessed, Randall.”
   “I see. That means we now have a minimum of eleven possessed to contend with. That much energistic potential is extremely dangerous.”
   “This whole area is sealed, sir, and I’ve got a squad covering each door.”
   “I’m sure you have, Captain. One moment.” He datavised the First Admiral and gave him a brief summary. “I have to advise we don’t send the marines in. Given the size of the courtroom and the number of possessed, I’d estimate marine casualties of at least fifty per cent.”
   “Agreed,” the First Admiral datavised back. “The marines don’t go in. But are you certain everyone in there is now possessed?”
   “I think it’s an inevitable conclusion, sir. This whole legal business was quite obviously just a ploy by Couteur to gain a foothold here. That many possessed represent a significant threat. My guess is that they may simply try to tunnel their way out; I expect they’ll be able to dissolve the rock around them. They must be neutralized as swiftly as possible. We can always acquire further individuals to continue my team’s research.”
   “Dr Gilmore, I’d remind you that my staff captain is in there, along with a number of civilians. We must make at least one attempt to subdue them. You’ve had weeks to research this energistic ability, you must be able to suggest something.”
   “There is one possibility, sir. I accessed Thakrar’s report; he used decompression against the possessed when they tried to storm the Villeneuve’s Revenge .”
   “To kill them.”
   “Yes. But it does indicate a weakness. I was going to recommend that we vent the courtroom’s atmosphere. That way we wouldn’t have to risk opening one of the doors to fire any sort of weapon in there. However, we could try gas against them first. They can force matter into new shapes, but I think altering a molecular structure would probably be beyond them. It needn’t even be a chemical weapon, we could simply increase the nitrogen ratio until they black out. Once they’ve been immobilized, they could be placed into zero-tau.”
   “How would you know if a gas assault worked? They destroyed the sensors, we can’t see in.”
   “There are a number of electronic systems remaining in the courtroom; if the possessed do succumb to the gas those systems should come back on line. But whatever we do, Admiral, we will have to open the door at some stage to confirm their condition.”
   “Very well, try the gas first. We owe Maynard and the others that much.”
 
   “We’re not going to have much time to get out,” Jacqueline Couteur said.
   Perez, who had come into Maynard Khanna’s body a few minutes earlier, was struggling to keep his thoughts flowing lucidly under a torrent of pain firing in from every part of his new frame. He managed to focus on some of the most badly damaged zones, seeing the blood dry up and torn discoloured flesh return to a more healthy aspect. “Mama , what did you do to this guy?”
   “Taught him not to be so stubborn,” Jacqueline said emotionlessly.
   He winced as he raised himself up onto his elbows. Despite his most ardent wishes, his damaged leg felt as if fireworms were burrowing through it. He could imagine it whole and perfect, and even see the image forming around reality, but that wasn’t quite enough to make it so. “Okay, so now what?” He glanced around. It was not the most auspicious of environments to welcome him back. Bodies were straddling the court’s wrecked fittings, small orange fires gnawed hungrily at various jagged chunks of composite, and hatred was beaming through each of the doors like an emotive X ray.
   “Not much,” she admitted. “But we have to look for some kind of advantage. We’re at the very centre of the Confederation’s resistance to us. There must be something we can do to help Capone and the others. I had hoped we could locate their nuclear weapons. The destruction of this base would be a significant blow to the Confederation.”
   “Forget that; those marines were good,” Lennart said grudgingly. He was standing in front of the judge’s bench, one hand pulling on his chin as he gazed intently at the floor. “You know, there’s some kind of room or corridor about twenty metres straight down.” The tiling started to flow away from his feet in fast ripples, exposing the naked rock below. “It won’t take long if we break this rock together.”
   “Maybe,” Jacqueline said. “But they’ll know we’re doing it. Gilmore will have surrounded us with sensors by now.”
   “What then?” asked one of the others they’d brought back. “For Christ’s sake, we can’t stay in here and wait for the Confederation Marines to bust down the door. I’ve only just returned. I’m not giving this body up after only ten minutes. I couldn’t stand that.”
   “Christ?” Jacqueline queried bitingly.
   “You might have to anyway,” Perez said. “We all might wind up back there in the beyond.”
   “Oh, why?” Jacqueline asked.
   “This Khanna knows of an ambush the Confederation Navy is planning against Capone. He is confident they will destroy the Organization fleet. Without Capone to crack new star systems open, we’re going to be stalled. Khanna is convinced the quarantine will prevent possession from spreading to any new worlds.”
   “Then we must tell Capone,” Jacqueline said. “All of us together must shout this news into the beyond.”
   “Fine,” Nena said. “Do that. But what about us? How are we going to get out of here?”
   “That is a secondary concern for us now.”
   “Not for me it bloody well isn’t.”
   When Jacqueline scowled at her, she saw beads of sweat pricking the woman’s brow. Nena was swaying slightly, too. Some of the others looked as if they were exhausted, their eyes glazing over. Even Jacqueline was aware her body had grown heavier than before. She sniffed the air suspiciously, finding it contaminated with the slightly clammy ozone taint of air-conditioning.
   “What exactly is the navy planning to do to Capone?” she asked.
   “They know he’s going to attack Toi-Hoi. They’re going to hide a fleet at Tranquillity, and intercept him when they know he’s on the way.”
   “We must remember that,” Jacqueline said firmly, fixing each of them in turn with a compelling stare. “Capone must be told. Get through to him.” She ignored everything else but the wish that the air in the courtroom was pure and fresh, blown down straight from some virgin mountain range. She could smell a weak scent of pine.
   One of the possessed sat down heavily. The others were all panting.
   “What’s happening?” someone asked.
   “Radiation, I expect,” Jacqueline said. “They’re probably bombarding us with gamma rays so they don’t have to come in to deal with us.”
   “Blast a door open,” Lennart said. “Charge them. A few of us might get through.”
   “Good idea,” Jacqueline said.
   He pointed a finger at the door behind the judge’s bench, its tip wavering about drunkenly. A weak crackle of white fire licked out. It managed to stain the door with a splatter of soot, but nothing more. “Help me. Come on, together!”
   Jacqueline closed her eyes, imagining all the clean air in the courtroom gathering around her and her alone. A light breeze ruffled her suit.
   “I don’t want to go back,” Perez wailed. “Not there!”
   “You must,” Jacqueline said. Her breathing was easier now. “Capone will find you a body. He’ll welcome you. I envy you for that.”
   Two more of the possessed toppled over. Lennart sagged to his knees, hands clutching at his throat.
   “The navy must never know what we discovered,” Jacqueline said thickly.
   Perez looked up at her, too weak to plead. It wouldn’t have been any use, he realized, not against that mind tone.
 
   The shaped electron explosive charge sliced clean through the courtroom door with a lightning-bolt flash. There was very little blowback against the marine squad crouched fifteen metres away down the corridor. Captain Peyton yelled “Go!” at the same time as the charge was triggered. His armour suit’s communications block was switched to audio, just in case the possessed were still active.
   Ten sense-overload ordnance rounds were fired through the opening as the wrecked door spun around like a dropped coin. A ferocious blast of light and sound surged back along the corridor. The squad rushed forward into the deluge.
   It was a synchronized assault. All three doors into the courtroom were blown at the same time. Three sets of sense-overload ordnance punched in. Three marine squads.
   Dr Gilmore was still hooked into Peyton’s neural nanonics, receiving the image direct from the captain’s shell helmet sensors. The scene which greeted him took a while to interpret. Dimming flares were sinking slowly through the air as tight beams of light from each suit formed a crazy jumping crisscross pattern above the wrecked fittings. Bodies lay everywhere. Some were victims of the earlier fight. Ten of them had been executed. There was no other explanation. Each of the ten had been killed by a bolt of white fire through the brain.
   Peyton was pushing his way through a ring of nearly twenty marines that had formed in the middle of the courtroom. Jacqueline Couteur stood at the centre, her shape blurred by a grey twister that had formed around her. It looked as if she’d been cocooned by solid strands of air. The twister was making a high-pitched whining sound as it undulated gently from side to side.
   Jacqueline Couteur’s hands were in the air. She gazed at the guns levelled against her with an almost sublime composure. “Okay,” she said. “You win. And I think I may need my lawyer again.”

Chapter 10

   There were nearly three thousand people in the crowd which assembled outside the starscraper lobby. Most of them looked fairly pissed at being summoned, but nobody actually argued with Bonney’s deputies when they came calling. They wanted a quiet life. On a planet they could have just walked away into the wilderness; here that option did not exist.
   Part of the lobby’s gently arching roof had crumpled, a remnant of an early battle during their takeover of the habitat. Bonney started to walk up the pile of rubble. She held a processor block in one hand, turning it so she could see the screen.
   “Last chance, Rubra,” she said. “Tell me where the boyo is, or I start getting serious.” The block’s screen remained blank. “You overheard what Patricia said. I know you did, because you’re a sneaky little shit. You’ve been manipulating me for a while now. I’m always told where he is, and he’s always gone when I get there. You’re helping him as much as you’re helping me, aren’t you? Probably trying to frighten him into cooperating with you. Was that it? Well, not anymore, Rubra, because Patricia has changed everything; we’re playing big boys’ rules now. I don’t have to be careful, I don’t have to respect your precious, delicate structure. It was fun going one on one against all those little bastards you stashed around the place. I enjoyed myself. But you were cheating the whole time. Funny, that’s what Dariat warned us about right from the start.” She reached the roof, and walked to the edge above the crowd. “You going to tell me?”
   The screen printed: THOSE LITTLE DEADNIGHT GIRLS THAT COME HERE, YOU REALLY ENJOY WHAT YOU DO WITH THEM, DON’T YOU, DYKE?
   Bonney dropped the processor block as if it were a piece of used toilet paper. “Game over, Rubra. You lose; I’m going to use nukes to crack you in half.”
   Dariat, I think you’d better listen to this.
   What now?
   Bonney, as usual. But things have just acquired an unpleasant edge. I don’t think Kiera should have left her unsupervised.
   Dariat hooked into the observation routines in time to see Bonney raise her hands for silence. The crowd gazed up at her expectantly.
   “We’ve got the power of genies,” she said. “You can grant yourself every wish you want. And we still have to live like dogs out in these shantytowns, grabbing what food we can, whipped into line, told where we can and can’t go. Rubra’s done that to us. We have starships for fuck’s sake. We can travel to another star system in less time than it takes your heart to beat once. But if you want to go from here to the endcap, you have to walk. Why? Because that shit Rubra won’t let us use the tubes. And up until now, we’ve let him get away with it. Well, not anymore.”
   Passionate lady,dariat said uncomfortably.
   Psycho lady, more like. They’re not going to disobey her, they wouldn’t dare. She’s going to marshal them together and send them after you. I can’t keep you ahead of an entire habitat of possessed hunting you. For once, boy, I’m not lying.
   Yeah. I can see that.dariat went over to the fire at the back of the cave. It had almost burnt out, leaving a pyramid of coals cloaked in a powder of fine grey ash. He stood looking at it, feeling the slumbering heat contained within the pink fragments.
   I have to decide. I can’t beat Rubra. And Rubra will be destroyed by Kiera when she returns. For thirty years I would have welcomed that. Thirty fucking years. My entire life.
   But he’s willing to sacrifice his mental integrity, to join my thoughts to his. He’s going to abandon two centuries of his belief that he can go it alone.
   Tatiana stirred on the blanket and sat up, bracelets chinking noisily. Sleepy confusion drained from her face. “That was a strange dream.” She gave him a shrewd glance. “But then this is a strange time, isn’t it?”
   “What was your dream?”
   “I was in a universe which was half light, half darkness. And I was falling out of the light. Then Anastasia caught me, and we started to fly back up again.”
   “Sounds like your salvation.”
   “What’s the matter?”
   “Things are changing. That means I have to decide what to do. And I don’t want to, Tatiana. I’ve spent thirty years not deciding. Thirty years telling myself this was the time I was waiting for. I’ve been a kid for thirty years.”
   Tatiana rose and stood beside him. He refused to meet her gaze, so she put an arm lightly on his shoulder. “What do you have to decide?”
   “If I should help Rubra; if I should join him in the neural strata and turn this into a possessed habitat.”
   “He wants that?”
   “I don’t think so. But he’s like me, there’s not much else either of us can do. The game’s over, and we’re running out of extra time.”
   She stroked him absently. “Whatever you decide, I don’t want you to take me into account. There are too many issues at stake, big issues. Individuals don’t matter so much; and I had a good run against that Bonney. We annoyed her a lot, eh? That felt nice.”
   “But individuals do matter. Especially you. It’s odd, I feel like I’ve come full circle. Anastasia always told me how precious a single life was. Now I have to decide your fate. And I can’t let you suffer, which is what’s going to happen if Rubra and I take on the possessed together. I’m responsible for her death, I can’t have yours on my hands as well. How could I ever face her with that weighing on my heart? I have to be true to her. You know I do.” He tilted his head back, his voice raised in anger. “Do you think you’ve won?”
   I never even knew we were fighting until this possession happened,rubra said sadly. You know what hopes I had for you in the old days, even though you never shared them. You know I never wanted anything to spoil my dreams for you. You were the golden prince, the chosen one. Fate stopped you from achieving your inheritance. That’s what Anastasia was, for you and for me. Fate. You would call it an act of Thoale.
   You believe all this was destined to be?
   I don’t know. All I know is that our union is the last chance either of us has to salvage something from all this shit. So now you have to ask yourself, do the living have a right to live, or do the dead rule the universe?
   That’s so like you, a loaded question.
   I am what I am.
   Not for very much longer.
   You’ll do it?
   Yes.
   Come in then, I’ll accept you into the neural strata.
   Not yet. I want to get Tatiana out first.
   Why?
   We may be virtually omnipotent after I come into the neural strata, but Bonney and the hellhawks still have the potential to damage the habitat shell very badly. I doubt we can quell them instantaneously, yet they will know the second I come into the neural strata. We are going to have a fight on our hands, I don’t want Tatiana hurt.
   Very well, I will ask the Kohistan Consensus for a voidhawk to take her off.
   You have a method?
   I have a possible method. I make no promises. You’d better get yourselves along to the counter-rotating spaceport before Bonney starts her hunt.
 
   It wasn’t merely a hunting party Bonney was organizing. She was keenly aware that Dariat could always flee her in the tube carriages, while she was reduced to chasing after him in one of the rentcop force’s open-top trucks. If Dariat was to be caught, then she would first have to cripple his mobility.
   The crowd she had assembled was split into teams, given specific instructions, and dispatched to carry them out. Each major team had one of her deputies to ensure they didn’t waver.
   Every powered vehicle in the habitat set out from the starscraper lobby, driving along the tracks through the overgrown grass. Most of them travelled directly to the other camps ringing starscraper lobbies, coercing their occupants into Bonney’s scheme. It was a domino effect, spreading rapidly around Valisk’s midsection.
   Kiera had wanted the tubes left alone so that when they moved Valisk out of the universe the transport system could be brought back on-line to serve them. Bonney had no such inhibitions. The possessed made their reluctant way into the starscraper lobbies, and down into the first-floor stations. There they combined their energistic power and started to systematically smash the tube tunnels. Huge chunks of polyp were torn out of the walls and roof to crash down on the magnetic guide rail. Power cables were ripped up and shorted out. Carriages were fired, adding to the blockages and sending thick plumes of black smoke billowing deep into the tunnels. Management processor blocks were blasted to cinders, exposing their interface with Valisk’s nerve fibres. Wave after wave of static discharges were pumped at the raw ends, sending what they hoped were pulses of pure pain down into the neural strata.
   Bolstered by their successful vandalism, and Rubra’s apparent inability to retaliate, the possessed began to move en mass down into the starscrapers. They sent waves of energistic power surging ahead of them, annihilating any mechanical or electrical system, wrecking artefacts and fittings. Every room, every corridor, every stairwell, were searched for non-possessed. Floor by floor they descended, recapturing the heady excitement and spirit of the original takeover. Unity infected them with strength. Individuals began to shapeshift into fantastic monsters and Earthly heroes. They weren’t just going to flush out the traitor enemy, they were going to do it with malevolent finesse.
   Hellhawks fluttered up from the docking ledges and began to spiral around the tubular starscrapers: an infernal flock peering into the bright oval windows with their potent senses, assisting their comrades inside.
   Together they would flush him out. It was only a matter of time now.
 
   Dariat sat opposite Tatiana in the tube carriage they took from the southern endcap. “We’re going to put you in one of the spaceport’s emergency escape pods,” he told her. “It’s going to be tough to start with, they launch at about twelve gees to get away fast. But it only lasts for eight seconds. You can take that. There’s a voidhawk squadron from Kohistan standing by to pick you up as soon as you’re clear.”
   “What about the possessed?” she asked. “Won’t they try and stop me, shoot at me or something?”
   “They won’t know what the hell’s going on. Rubra is going to fire all two hundred pods at once. The voidhawks will swallow in and snatch your pod before the hellhawks even know you’re out there.”
   A smirk of good-humoured dubiety stroked Tatiana’s face. “If you say so. I’m proud of you, Dariat. You’ve come through when it really counts, shown your true self. And it’s a good self. Anastasia would be proud of you, too.”
   “Why, thank you.”
   “You should enjoy your victory, take heart from it. Lady Chi-ri will be smiling on you tonight. Bask in that warmth.”
   “We haven’t won yet.”
   “You have. Don’t you see? After all those years of struggle you’ve finally beaten Anstid. He hasn’t dictated what you’re doing now. This act is not motivated by hatred and revenge.”
   Dariat grinned. “Not hatred. But I’m certainly enjoying putting one over on that witch queen Bonney.”
   Tatiana laughed. “Me too!”
   Dariat had to grab at his seat as the carriage braked sharply. Tatiana gasped as she clung to one of the vertical poles, hanging on frantically as the lights began to dim.
   “What’s happening?” she asked.
   The carriage juddered to a halt. The lights went out, then slowly returned as the vehicle’s backup electron matrix came on line.
   Rubra?
   Little bastards are smashing up the station you were heading for. They’ve cut the power to the magnetic rail, I haven’t even got the reserve circuits.
   Dariat hooked into the neural strata’s observation routines to survey the damage. The starscraper station was a scene of violent devastation. Smouldering lumps of polyp were chiselled out of the tunnel by invisible surges of energy; the guidance rail writhed and flexed, screaming shrilly as its movements yanked its own fixing pins out of the floor; severed electrical cables swung from broken conduits overhead, spitting sparks. Laughter and catcalls rang out over the noise of the violence.
   A rapid flick through other stations showed him how widespread the destruction was.
   Bloody hell.
   Damn right,rubra said. She’s overdosing on the fury routine, but she’s playing smart with it.
   A schematic of the tube network appeared in Dariat’s mind. Look, there are plenty of alternative routes left up to the spindle.
   Yes, right now there are. But you’ll have to go back two stations before I can switch you to another tunnel. I can’t restore power to the rail in your tunnel, they’ve fucked the relays. The carriage will have to make it there on its own power reserve. You’d almost be quicker walking. And by the time you get there, the possessed will have wrecked a whole lot more stations. Bonney’s thought this out well; the way she’s isolating each stretch of tunnel will break up the entire network in another forty minutes.
   So how the hell do we get to the spindle now?
   Forwards. Go up to the station and walk though it. I can bring another carriage to the tunnel on the other side; that’ll get you directly up to the endcap.
   Walk through? You’re kidding.
   There’s only a couple of possessed left to guard each station after they’ve had their rampage. Two won’t be a problem.
   All right, do it.
   The lights dipped again as the carriage slid forwards slowly.
   “Well?” Tatiana asked.
   Dariat began to explain.
   Starscrapers formed the major nodes in the habitat’s tube network; each of them had seven stations ringing the lobby, enabling the carriages to reach any part of the interior. Individual stations were identical; chambers with a double-arch ceiling and a central platform twenty metres long which served two tubes. The polyp walls were a light powder-blue, with strips of electrophorescent cells running the entire length above the rails. There were stairs at each end of the platform, one set leading up to the starscraper lobby, the other an emergency exit to the parkland.
   In the station ahead of Dariat, the possessed finished their wrecking spree and went off up the stairs to start searching the starscraper. As Rubra predicted, they left two of their number behind to watch over the four tunnel entrances. Smoke from the attack was layering the air. Flames were still licking around the big piles of ragged polyp slabs blocking the end of each tunnel. Several hologram adverts flashed on and off overhead; an already damaged projector suffering from the proximity of the possessed turned the images to a nonsense splash of colours.
   Given that the fire was dying away naturally, the two possessed were somewhat bemused when, seven minutes after everyone else left, the station’s sprinklers suddenly came on.
   Dariat was three hundred metres down the tube tunnel, helping Tatiana out of the carriage’s front emergency hatch. The tunnel had only the faintest illumination, a weak blue glow coming from a couple of narrow electrophorescent strips on the walls. It curved away gently ahead of him, putting enough solid polyp between him and the station to prevent the two possessed from perceiving him.
   Tatiana jumped down the last half metre and steadied herself.
   “Ready?” Dariat asked. He was already using the habitat’s sensitive cells to study the pile of polyp they would have to climb over to get into the station. It didn’t look too difficult, there was an easy metre and a half gap at the top.
   “Ready.”
   Let’s go,dariat said.
   The two possessed guards had given up any attempt to shield themselves from the torrent of water falling from the sprinklers. They were retreating back to the shelter of the stairs. Their clothes had turned to sturdy anoraks, streaked with glistening runnels. Every surface was slick with water now: walls, platform, floor, the piles of polyp.
   Rubra overrode the circuit breakers governing the cables which powered the tube, then shunted thirteen thousand volts back into the induction rail. It was the absolute limit for the habitat’s integral organic conductors, and three times the amount the carriages used. The broken guide rail jumped about as it had while it was being tormented by the possessed. Blinding white light leapt out of the magnetic couplings as it split open. It was as though someone had fired a fusion drive into the station. Water droplets spraying out of the overhead nozzles fluoresced violet, and vaporized. Metal surfaces erupted into wailing jets of sparks.
   At the heart of the glaring bedlam, two bodies ignited, flaring even brighter than the seething air.
   It wasn’t just the one station, that would have drawn Bonney’s attention like a combat wasp’s targeting sensor. Rubra launched dozens of attacks simultaneously. Most of them were electrical, but there were also mass charges of servitor animals, as well as mechanoids switched back on, slashing around indiscriminately with laser welders and fission blades as energistic interference crashed their processors.
   Reports of the tumult poured into the starscraper lobby where Bonney had set up her field headquarters. Her deputies shouted warnings into the powerful walkie-talkies they used to keep in contact with each other.
   As soon as the blaze of white light shone down the tunnel, Dariat started to run towards it. He kept hold of Tatiana’s hand, pulling her onwards. A loud caterwaul reverberated along the tunnel.
   “What’s Rubra doing to them?” she shouted above the din.
   “What he had to.”
   The abusive light died and the sound faded away. Dariat could see the pile of polyp now, eighty metres ahead. A crescent-shaped sliver of light straddled it, seeping in from the station beyond.
   Their feet began to splash through rivulets of water flowing down the tunnel. Tatiana grimaced as they reached the foot of the blockage, and hitched her skirt up.
   Bonney listened to the frantic shouting all around her, counting up the incidents, the number of casualties. They’d got off lightly. And she knew that was wrong.
   “Quiet,” she bellowed. “How many stations attacked? Total?”
   “Thirty-two,” one of the deputies said.
   “And over fifty attacks altogether. But we’ve only lost about seventy to eighty people in the stations. Rubra’s just getting rid of the sentries we posted. If he wanted to seriously harm us he’d do it when the wrecking crews were down there.”
   “A diversion? Dariat’s somewhere else?”
   “No,” she said. “Not quite. We know he uses the tubes to get around. I’ll bet the little shit’s in one right now. He must be. Only we’ve already blocked him. Rubra is clearing the sentries out of the way so Dariat can sneak through. That’s why he spread the attacks around, so we’d think it was a blanket assault.” She whirled around to face a naked polyp pillar and grinned with malicious triumph. “That’s it, isn’t it, boyo? That’s what you’re doing. But which way is he going, huh? The starscrapers are dead centre.” She shook her head in annoyance. “All right you people, get sharp. I want someone down in each and every station Rubra attacked. And I want them down there now. Tell them to make sure they don’t step in the water, and be on the lookout for servitors. But get them down there.”
   The image of her yelling orders at her deputies boiled into Dariat’s mind like a particularly vigorous hangover. He had just reached the top of the polyp pile and squeezed under the ceiling. The station was filled with thick white mist, reducing visibility to less than five metres. Condensation had penetrated everywhere, making this side of the polyp mound dangerously unstable.
   Smart bitch,rubra said. I didn’t expect that.
   Can you delay them?
   Not in this station, I can’t. I haven’t got any servitors nearby, and the cables have all burnt out. You’ll have to run.
   Image relay of a deputy with a walkie-talkie pressed to his ear hurrying across the lobby above. “I’m on it, I’m on it,” he was yelling into the mike.
   “Tatiana, move it!” Dariat shouted.
   Tatiana was still wriggling along on her belly as she slithered over the top of the pile. “What’s the matter?”
   “Someone’s coming.”
   She gave one final squirm and freed her legs. Together they scooted down the side of the pile, bringing a minor avalanche of slushy gravel with them.
   “This way.” Dariat pointed into the mist. His perception filled in glass-grey outlines of the station walls through the swirls of cold vapour, enabling him to see the tunnel entrance. Valisk’s sensitive cells showed him the carriage waiting a hundred and fifty metres further on. They also showed him the deputy reaching the top of the stairs.
   “Wait here,” he told Tatiana, and vaulted up onto the platform. His appearance changed drastically, the simple one-piece thickening to an elaborate purple uniform, complete with gold braid. The most imposing figure to dominate his youth: Colonel Chaucer. A weekly AV show of a renegade Confederation officer, a super vigilante.
   Rubra was laughing softly in his head.
   The deputy was halfway down the stairs when he started to slow up. He raised the walkie-talkie. “Somebody’s down here.”
   Dariat reached the bottom of the stairs. “Only me,” he called up cheerfully.
   “Who the hell are you?”
   “You first. This is my station.”
   The deputy’s mind revealed his confusion as Dariat started up towards him with powerful, confident strides. This was not the action of someone trying to hide.
   Dariat opened his mouth wide and spat a ball of white fire directly at the deputy’s head. Two souls bawled in terror as they vanished into the beyond. The body tumbled past Dariat.
   “What’s happening?” The walkie-talkie was reverting back to a standard communications block as it clattered down the stairs. “What’s happening? Report. Report.”
   There’s four more on their way up from the first floor,rubra said. Bonney ordered them to the station as soon as the deputy said he sensed someone.
   Shit! We’ll never make it to the carriage. They can outrun Tatiana no problem.
   Call her up. I’ll hide you in the starscraper.
   What?
   Just move!
   “Tatiana! Up here, now!” He was aware of all the lift doors in the lobby sliding open. The four possessed had reached the bottom of the first-floor stairs. Tatiana jogged along the platform. She gave the corpse a quick, appalled glance.
   “Come on.” Dariat caught her hand and tugged hard. Her expression was resentful, but the rising anxiety in his voice spurred her. They raced up the stairs together.
   Daylight shone through the circular lobby’s glass walls. It had suffered very little damage; scorch marks on the polyp pillars and cracked glass were the only evidence that the possessed had arrived to search the tower.
   Dariat could hear multiple footsteps pounding up one of the stairwells on the other side of the lobby, hidden by the central bank of lifts. His perception was just starting to register their minds emerging from behind the shield of polyp. Which meant they’d also be able to sense him.
   He scooped Tatiana up, ignoring her startled holler, and sprinted for the lifts. Huge muscles pumped his legs in an effortless rhythm. She weighed nothing at all.
   The phenomenal speed he was travelling at meant there was no chance at all of slowing once he passed the lift doors; he would have needed ten metres to come to a halt. They slammed straight into the rear wall. Tatiana shrieked as her shoulder, ribs, and leg hit flat on, with Dariat’s prodigious inertia driving into her. Then his face smacked into silvery metal, and there was no energistic solution to the blast of pain jabbing into his brain. Blood squirted out of his nose, smearing the wall. As he fell he was dimly aware of the lift doors sliding shut. The light outside was growing inordinately bright.
   Dariat reeled around feebly, clutching at his head as if the pressure from his fingers alone could squeeze the bruises back down out of existence. Slowly the pain subsided, which allowed him to concentrate on vanquishing the remainder. “Ho fuck.” He slumped back against a wall and let his breathing calm. Tatiana was lying on the lift floor in front of him, hands pressed against her side, cold sweat on her brow.
   “Anything broken?” he asked.
   “I don’t think so. It just hurts.”
   He went onto his hands and knees and crawled over to her. “Show me where.”
   She pointed, and he laid his hand on. With his mind he could see the smooth glowing pattern of living flesh distorted and broken below his fingers, the fissures extending deep inside her. He willed the pattern to return to its unblemished state.
   Tatiana hissed in relief. “I don’t know what you did, but it’s better than a medical nanonic.”
   The lift stopped at the fiftieth floor.
   Now what?dariat asked.
   Rubra showed him.
   You are one evil bastard.
   Why, thank you, boy.
 
   Stanyon was leading the possessed down through the starscraper in pursuit of Dariat. He’d started off with thirty-five under his command, and that number was rapidly swelling as Bonney directed more and more from neighbouring starscrapers to assist him. She’d announced she was on her way herself. Stanyon was going balls-out to find Dariat before she arrived. He got hot just thinking about the praise (and other things) Kiera would direct at the champion who erased her bête noire from the habitat.
   Eight different teams of possessed were searching, assigned a floor each. They were working their way steadily downwards, demolishing every mechanical and electrical device as they went.
   He strode out of the stairwell onto the thirty-eighth-floor vestibule. For whatever reason, Rubra was no longer putting up any resistance. Muscle-membrane doors opened obediently, the lighting remained on, there wasn’t a servitor in sight. He looked around, happy with what he found. The floor’s mechanical utilities office had been broken open, and the machinery inside reduced to slag, preventing the sprinklers from being used. Doors into the apartments and bars and commercial offices were smashed apart, furniture and fittings inside were blazing with unnatural ferocity. Big circles of polyp flooring were cracking under the intense heat, grainy white marble surface blackening. Wisps of dirty steam fizzed up from the crannies.
   “Die,” Stanyon snarled. “Die a little bit at a time. Die hurting big.”
   He was walking towards the stairwell door when his walkie-talkie squawked: “We got him! He’s down here.”
   Stanyon snatched the unit from his belt. “Where? Who is this? Which floor are you on?”
   “This is Talthorn the Greenfoot; I’m on floor forty-nine. He’s just below us. We can all sense him.”
   “Everybody hear that?” Stanyon yelled gleefully. “Fiftieth floor. Get your arses down there.” He sprinted for the stairwell.
 
   “They’re coming,” Dariat said.
   Tatiana flashed him a worried-but-brave grin, and finished tying the last cord around her pillow. They were in a long-disused residential apartment; its polyp furniture of horseshoe tables and oversized scoop armchairs dominating the living room. The chairs had been turned into cushion nests to add a dash of comfort. The foam used to fill the cushions was a lightweight plastic that was ninety-five per cent nitrogen bubbles.
   They were, Rubra swore, perfect buoyancy aids.
   Dariat tried on his harness one last time. The cords which he’d torn from the gaudy cushion fabric held a pillow to his chest and another against his back. Seldom had he felt so ridiculous.
   His doubt must have leaked onto his face.
   If it works, don’t try to fix it,rubra said.
   Ripe, from someone who’s devoted his existence to meddling.
   Game set and match, I won’t even appeal. Would you like to get ready?
   Dariat used the starscraper’s observation routines to check on the possessed. There were twelve of them on the floor above. A rock-skinned troll was leading the pack; followed by a pair of cyber-ninjas in black flak jackets; a xenoc humanoid that was all shiny amber exoskeleton and looked like it could rip metal apart with its talons; a faerie prince wearing his forest hunting tunic and carrying a longbow in one hand, a walkie-talkie in the other; three or four excessively hairy Neanderthals; and regular soldiers in the uniforms of assorted eras.
   “The loonies are on the warpath tonight,” Dariat muttered under his breath. “Finished?” he asked Tatiana.
   She shifted her front pillow around and tightened the last strap to hold it in place. “I’m ready.”
   The bathroom’s muscle-membrane door parted silently. Inside was an emerald-green suite: a circular bath, vaguely Egyptian in design, matched by the basin, bidet, and toilet. They were still all in perfect condition. It was the plumbing which had degraded. Water was dripping from the brass shower head above the bath; over the years it had produced a big orange stain on the bottom. Slimy blue-green algae was growing out of the plug. The sink was piled high with bars of soap; so old and dry now that they’d started to crumble, snowing flecks over the rim.
   Dariat stood in the doorway, with Tatiana pressed against him, looking eagerly over his shoulder. “What’s supposed to be happening?” she asked.
   “Watch.”
   A bass crunching sound was coming from the toilet. Cracks appeared around its base, expanding rapidly outwards. Then the whole bowl lurched upwards, spinning around precariously before toppling over. A two-metre circle of floor around it was rising up like a miniature volcanic eruption. Polyp splintered with a continual brassy crackling. A fine jet of water sprayed out of the fractured flush pipe.
   “Lord Tarrug, what are you doing?” Tatiana asked.
   “That’s not Tarrug, that’s Rubra,” Dariat told her. “No dark arts involved.”
   Affinity with the local sub-routines allowed him to feel the toilet’s sphincter muscle straining as it contorted in directions it was never intended, rupturing the thin shell of polyp floor. It halted, fully expended. The cone which it had produced quivered slightly, then stilled. Dariat hurried over. There was a crater at the centre, leading down to an impenetrable darkness. The muscle tissue which made up the sides was a tough dark red flesh, now badly lacerated. Pale yellow fluid was oozing out of the splits, running down to disappear in the unseen space below.
   “Our escape route,” Dariat said, echoing Rubra’s pride.
   “A toilet?” she asked incredulously.
   “Sure. Don’t go squeamish on me now, please.” He sat on the edge of the sphincter and swung his legs over the crater. It was a three-metre slither down into the sewer tubule below. When his feet touched the bottom he knelt down and held a hand out. His skin began to glow with a strong pink light. It revealed the tubule stretching on ahead of him, a circular shaft just over a metre in diameter, and angled slightly downwards.
   “Throw the pillows down,” he said.
   Tatiana dropped them, peering over the edge of the crater with a highly dubious expression. Dariat shoved the two harnesses into the tubule, and started to worm his way in after them. “When I’m in, you follow me, okay?” He didn’t give her the chance to answer. It was awkward going, pushing the pillows ahead of him as he crawled along. The grey polyp was slippery with water and fecal sludge. Dariat could hear Tatiana grunting and muttering behind him as she discovered the residue smearing the sides.
   There were ridges encircling the tubule every four metres, peristaltic muscle bands that assisted the usual water flow. Despite Rubra expanding them wide, they formed awkward constrictions which Dariat had to pull himself through. He had just squeezed past the third when Rubra said: They’ve reached the fiftieth floor. Can you sense them?
   Not a chance. So in theory they won’t be able to find me.
   They know the general direction, and they’re heading towards the apartment.
   Dariat was too intent on inching himself along to review the images. What about the rest?
   On their way down. The stairwells are absolutely packed. It’s like a freak-show stampede out there.
   He elbowed his way through another muscle band. The light from his hand showed the tubule walls ending two metres ahead. A thick ring of muscle membrane surrounded the rim. Beyond that was a clear empty space. He could hear a steady patter of rain in the darkness.
   “We made it,” he shouted.
   His only answer was another outbreak of grunted curses.
   Dariat pushed the filthy pillows and their tangled cords over the edge, hearing them splash into the water. Then he was sliding himself over.
   The main ingestion tract into which the sewer tubule emptied ran vertically up the entire height of the starscraper. It collected the human waste, discarded organic matter, and dirty water from every floor and carried it down to the large purification organs at the base of the starscraper. They filtered out organic compounds which were pumped back to the principal nutrient organs inside the southern endcap via their own web of specialist tubules. Poisons and toxins were disposed of directly into space. Fresh water was recirculated up to the habitat’s storage reservoirs and parkland rivers.