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“How the hell did Webb know where I was going?”
“I imagine Lady Mac ’s crew is under clandestine surveillance right now.”
“Jesus!”
“Quite. We will have to withdraw and come up with a new strategy.”
They reached the lift doors, and Joshua datavised for a ride back to the axial chamber. He cast another glance over his shoulder to check on Webb, a sly smile germinating on his face. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The agencies don’t have her yet. We’re still in with a chance.”
“That’s logical.”
“Of course it’s logical. We may even be able to turn this to our advantage.”
“How?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re back in Lady Mac . Everyone’s going to have to undergo decontamination first. Christ knows what sort of covert nanonics they’ve stung us with. We’ll be broadcasting our own thoughts back to them if we’re not careful.”
The lift doors opened and he stepped inside. Someone had slapped half a dozen twenty-centimetre circular holomorph stickers at random over the walls, with a couple more on the ceiling. One was at head height; it started its cycle, a tight bud of lavender photons swelling out from the centre into the form of a scantily clad teenage cheerleader. She shook her silver baton enthusiastically. “Run, Alkad, run!” she yelled. “You’re our last hope; don’t let them catch you. Run, Alkad, run!”
Joshua stared at it in stupefaction. “Jesus wept.”
The cheerleader winked saucily, and syphoned back down below the sticker’s surface. Three more began their cycle.
Chapter 02
“I imagine Lady Mac ’s crew is under clandestine surveillance right now.”
“Jesus!”
“Quite. We will have to withdraw and come up with a new strategy.”
They reached the lift doors, and Joshua datavised for a ride back to the axial chamber. He cast another glance over his shoulder to check on Webb, a sly smile germinating on his face. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The agencies don’t have her yet. We’re still in with a chance.”
“That’s logical.”
“Of course it’s logical. We may even be able to turn this to our advantage.”
“How?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re back in Lady Mac . Everyone’s going to have to undergo decontamination first. Christ knows what sort of covert nanonics they’ve stung us with. We’ll be broadcasting our own thoughts back to them if we’re not careful.”
The lift doors opened and he stepped inside. Someone had slapped half a dozen twenty-centimetre circular holomorph stickers at random over the walls, with a couple more on the ceiling. One was at head height; it started its cycle, a tight bud of lavender photons swelling out from the centre into the form of a scantily clad teenage cheerleader. She shook her silver baton enthusiastically. “Run, Alkad, run!” she yelled. “You’re our last hope; don’t let them catch you. Run, Alkad, run!”
Joshua stared at it in stupefaction. “Jesus wept.”
The cheerleader winked saucily, and syphoned back down below the sticker’s surface. Three more began their cycle.
Chapter 02
Arnstadt fell to the Organization fleet after a ninety-minute battle above the planet. The Strategic Defence network was hammered into oblivion by Capone’s antimatter-powered combat wasps. There had been some advance warning from the Edenists, giving the local navy time to redeploy their ships. Three squadrons of voidhawks had arrived from the habitats orbiting one of the system’s gas giants, reinforcing the Adamist vessels.
None of the preparations altered the final outcome. Forty-seven Arnstadt navy ships were destroyed, along with fifteen voidhawks. The remaining voidhawks swallowed away, withdrawing back to the gas giant.
The Organization fleet’s transport starships moved unopposed into low orbit, and spaceplanes began to ferry a small army of possessed down to the surface. Like all modern Confederation planets, Arnstadt had few soldiers. There were several marine brigades, which were mainly trained in space warfare techniques and covert mission procedures. Wars in this era were fought between starships. The days of foreign invasion forces marching across enemy territory had vanished before the end of the twenty-first century.
With its SD network reduced to radioactive meteorites flaring through bruised skies, Arnstadt was incapable of offering the slightest resistance to the possessed marching down out of their spaceplanes. Small towns were infiltrated first, increasing the numbers of possessed available to move on to larger towns. The area of captured ground began to increase exponentially.
Luigi Balsmao set up his headquarters in one of the orbiting asteroid settlements. Information on the people captured by the advancing possessed was datavised up to the asteroid where the structure coordination programs written by Emmet Mordden decided if they should be possessed or not. Organization lieutenants were appointed, their authority backed up by the firepower of fleet starships in low orbit.
With the subjugation of the planet confidently under way, Luigi split half of the fleet into squadrons and deployed them against the system’s asteroid settlements. Only the Edenist habitats were left alone; after Yosemite, Capone wasn’t about to risk a second defeat on such a scale.
Starships were dispatched back to New California, and fresh cargo ships began to arrive soon, bringing with them the basic components for a new SD network along with other equipment to help consolidate the Organization’s advance. Rover reporters were allowed to see carefully selected sections of the planet under its new masters: children left non-possessed to run around freely, possessed and non-possessed working side by side to restart the economy, Luigi stamping down hard on any possessed who didn’t acknowledge the Organization’s leadership.
News of the successful invasion swept across the Confederation, backed up by sensevise recordings from the reporters. Surprise was total. One star system’s government—no matter what its nature—taking over another was a concept always considered totally impossible. Capone had proved it wasn’t. In doing so he set off a chain reaction of panic. Commentators began to talk about planetary level exponential curves, the most extreme showing the entire Confederation falling to the Organization within six months as the industrial resources of more and more systems were absorbed by Capone’s empire.
On the Assembly floor, demands that the Confederation Navy should intervene and destroy the Organization fleet became almost continuous. First Admiral Aleksandrovich had to make several appearances to explain how impractical the notion was. The best the navy could do, he said, was to seek out the source of Capone’s antimatter and prevent a third system from being taken over. Arnstadt was already lost. Capone had secured a victory which couldn’t be reversed without a great loss of life. At this stage, such casualties were wholly unacceptable. He also pointed out that, sadly, a great many non-possessed crews were cooperating with the Organization to operate their starships. Without them, the invasion of Arnstadt could never have happened. Perhaps, he suggested, the Assembly should consider introducing an emergency act to deal with any such traitors. Such legislation might, in future, discourage captains seeking to sign up with Capone for short term gain.
“Escort duties?” André Duchamp asked wearily. “I thought we were here to help defend New California itself. What exactly does this escort duty entail?”
“Monterey hasn’t given me a detailed briefing,” Iain Girardi said. “But you will simply be protecting cargo ships from attack by the Confederation Navy. Which is exactly what your contract stipulated.”
“Hardly,” Madeleine growled. “Nor does it say anywhere that we help a deranged dictator who wiped out an entire fucking planet. I say jump out, Captain. Power up the patterning nodes right now and get the fuck out of here while we still can.”
“I would have thought this was a more appealing task for you,” Iain Girardi said. His acceleration couch webbing peeled back, and he drifted off the cushioning. “The majority of the crews in the cargo ships are non-possessed, and you won’t be permanently in range of the Organization’s SD platforms. If anything, we’re giving you an easier job with less risk for the same money.”
“Where would we be going?” André asked.
“Arnstadt. The Organization is shipping industrial equipment there to help restart the planetary economy.”
“If they hadn’t blown it all to shit in the first place they wouldn’t need to restart it,” Madeleine said.
André shushed her impatiently. “It seems fine to me,” he told Iain Girardi. “However, the ship will require some maintenance work before we can undertake such an assignment. An escort flight is very different from supplementing planetary defences.”
Iain Girardi’s humour appeared strained for the first time. “Yes. I’ll have to discuss the nature of the repairs with Monterey.” He datavised the flight computer for a communications channel.
André waited with a neutral smile.
“The Organization will bring the Villeneuve’s Revenge up to full combat-capable status,” Iain Girardi announced. “Your hull and sensor suite will be repaired by us, but you must meet the cost of secondary systems.”
André shrugged. “Take it out of our fee.”
“Very well. Please dock at Monterey’s spaceport, bay VB757. I shall disembark there; you’ll be assigned a liaison officer for the mission.”
“Non-possessed,” Desmond Lafoe said sharply.
“Of course. I believe they want you to take some reporters with you, as well. They’ll require access to your sensors during the flight.”
“Merde. Those filth. What for?”
“Mr Capone is highly focused on the need for accurate publicity. He wants the Confederation to see that he is not a real threat.”
“Unlike Arnstadt,” Madeleine said swiftly.
André piloted the starship down from its emergence zone to the large asteroid. Spaceflight traffic above New California was heavy: starships raced between the orbital asteroids and the emergence zones, spaceplanes and ion field flyers flew a constant shuttle service from the planet. Although the starship only had sixty-five per cent of its sensor clusters remaining, André kept them fully extended to gather what information he could.
When the flight computer told her Girardi was talking to Monterey again, Madeleine opened an encrypted channel to André: “I don’t think we should dock,” she datavised.
The captain extended the datavise to include Erick and Desmond. “Why not?”
“Look at those ships out there, if anything there’s more activity than before the planet was possessed. I didn’t realize how damn professional this Capone Organization is. We’re not going to get out of this, André, we’re in too deep. The second we dock they’ll swarm on board and possess us.”
“Then who will crew the ship for them? Non , they need us.”
“She has a point about the Organization’s size and motivation, though,” Erick datavised. “The possessed are dependent on us flying the warships, but what happens when there are no more worlds left to invade? Capone took Arnstadt in less than a day, and almost doubled his military resources doing so. He’s not going to stop now. If he and the rest of the possessed keep on winning at that rate, there will be no place left for non-possessed anywhere in the Confederation. That’s what we’ll be helping bring about.”
“I know this.” André cast a guilty glance at Girardi to make sure he wasn’t aware of the conversation. “That is why I agreed to the escort duty.”
“I don’t get it,” Madeleine said.
“Simple, ma chérie . The Organization repairs the Villeneuve’s Revenge for me, fills up our cryogenic fuel tanks, equips us with combat wasps, and sends us off on a flight. Then while we’re en route, we vanish. What is to stop us?”
“Their liaison officer, for a start,” Desmond said.
“Ha, one man. We can overcome him. Capone has made his greatest mistake in trying to dishonour André Duchamp. It is I who is using them now, for the benefit of my fellow man, comme il faut. I am no quisling. And I think we should make sure the reporters know of this savage blow we will strike against Capone.”
“You really intend to leave?” Madeleine asked.
“Naturally.”
Erick grinned, as best as his new skin would allow him. For once Duchamp’s devious nature could actually work for the best. He opened a new file in his neural nanonics memory cell and started recording the sensor images. CNIS would want to know about the Organization’s disposition; though he suspected the New California system would already be under full covert surveillance.
“What about Shane Brandes?” Desmond asked.
André’s face darkened. “What about him?”
“How long were you planning to leave him in zero-tau?”
“I could hardly drop him off at Chaumort, it was too small. We want a backwards planet where we can dump him in the middle of a desert or a jungle.”
“Lalonde would do,” Madeleine said under her breath.
“Well, if you’re looking for somewhere he won’t come back from,” Desmond offered maliciously.
“No,” Erick datavised.
“Why not?” André asked. “Give him to the Organization when we dock. It is an excellent idea. Shows them how loyal we are.”
“We kill him, or dump him. But not that. You didn’t see what they did to Bev.”
André flinched. “Very well. But I’m not hanging on to that bastard forever, his zero-tau is costing me power.”
Villeneuve’s Revenge docked in its designated bay, its crew alert for any treachery from the Organization. There was none to see. As Iain Girardi promised, maintenance teams immediately started to work on the starship’s battered hull and defunct sensors. It took eleven hours to withdraw the damaged sections and install new replacements. Integration and diagnostic checks took another two hours to complete.
Once André agreed that they were ready for escort duties, the Organization started loading combat wasps into the launch tubes. An airlock tube slid out from the docking bay wall to connect with the Villeneuve’s Revenge .
It was Desmond, armed with a machine pistol bought on Chaumort, who went down to the lower deck with Girardi. He made sure the tube was completely empty before opening the hatch and letting the Organization man out. Only when Girardi had swum down the length of the tube, and closed the far hatch behind him, did he give André the all-clear.
“Send your liaison officer through,” André datavised to the spaceport.
As arranged, the man wore nothing, towing his clothes in a small bag behind him as he came along the tube. Desmond made every test they could think of, requesting complex datavises from the liaison officer’s neural nanonics, exposing him to different processor blocks.
“I think he’s clean,” Desmond datavised.
Madeleine unlocked the manual latches on the hatch to the lower deck.
The liaison officer introduced himself as Kingsley Pryor. To Erick, his subdued behaviour and quiet, stumbling voice indicated someone emerging from shock.
“There will be a convoy of twelve cargo ships departing for Arnstadt in three hours,” Kingsley Pryor told them. “The Villeneuve’s Revenge will be one of five combat-capable ships escorting them. Your job is to defend them from any sneak attacks from Confederation Navy ships. If it does happen, they’ll probably use voidhawks against us.” He gave the bridge a thoughtful look. “I wasn’t told there would only be four of you. Is that enough to operate at full combat efficiency?”
“Of course it is,” André responded hotly. “We have survived much worse than a voidhawk attack.”
“Very well. There is one other thing you should know. The Organization is held together by fear and respect, obedience must be total. You have accepted our money and signed on with the fleet, we will not tolerate any disloyalty.”
“You come on my ship, and tell me—” André blustered loudly.
Kingsley Pryor held up a hand. Weak though the gesture was, it silenced Duchamp immediately. Something in the liaison officer’s manner put a great deal of weight behind his authority. “You signed a pact with the devil, Captain. Now I’m explaining the small print. You don’t trust us, fair enough; we don’t really trust you either. I’m sure that now you’ve seen New California firsthand you’ve realized just how powerful and dedicated the Organization is, and you’re having second thoughts about supporting us. Perfectly natural. After all, it would be very easy for a starship to disappear in the direction of the Confederation. Let me try and dissuade you. While your ship was being repaired, a nuclear explosive was included inside one of the new components. It has a seven-hour timer which must be reset by a code. I do not have that code, so you cannot use debrief nanonics to extract it from me. A liaison officer in one of the other escort ships will transmit that code at us every three hours, resetting the timer. In turn I will transmit the code I have been given at the other ships, which have been similarly modified. If all of us stay together, there will be no problem. If one ship leaves, they will be killing themselves and the crew of another ship.”
“Remove it now!” André shouted furiously. “I will not fly under such a blackmail threat.”
“It is not blackmail, Captain, it is enforcement, making sure you abide by the terms of your contract. I believe the argument goes along the lines of: If you intended to keep the agreement you made with us you have nothing to worry about.”
“I will not fly with a bomb on board. That is final!”
“Then they will come on board, and possess you. And another crew will be found. It is the ship and its capability they want, Captain, not you as an individual.”
“This is intolerable!”
For a moment a real anger shone in Kingsley Pryor’s eyes. He sneered at André. “So is a free man agreeing to help Capone, Captain.” Then the emotion was gone, leaving only the meek expression in its wake. “Shall we get the reporters on board now? We haven’t got too much time before we have to be at the jump coordinate.”
Jed Hinton was still a hundred metres from the pub when he knelt down and took the red handkerchief off his ankle. Koblat’s adults were starting to get nettled by Deadnight; kids that followed the cause were being hassled. Nothing serious, some jostling in public places, arguments at home. The usual crap.
Digger, of course, despised the recording; descending into a rage whenever it was mentioned. For once Jed enjoyed a guilty delight at the way he intimidated Miri and Navar, forbidding them to have anything to do with it. Without realizing, he’d altered the political structure of the family. Now it was Jed and Gari who were the favoured ones, the ones who could access Kiera Salter, and talk about her ideas with their friends, and know the taste of freedom.
Jed walked into the Blue Fountain, making out like it was cool for him to be there. Normally he’d be anywhere else, it was Digger’s pub. But Digger was busy these days; not working the tunnelling units, but out at the spaceport doing maintenance on the machinery in the docking bays. There were three shifts a day now, supporting the increasing number of flights. Yet although everyone knew perfectly well starships were arriving and departing several times a day, there was no official log. Three times he’d accessed the net and asked the spaceport register for a list of ships docked only to be told there were none.
Fascinated, the Deadnight kids had asked around, and together they’d pieced together the basics of the quarantine-busting operation. They had all been excited that day, starships arriving illegally was perfect for them. Beth had smiled at him and said: “Bloody hell, we might just make it to Valisk, after all.” Then she’d hugged him. She’d never done that before, not in that way.
He asked the barman for a beer, slowly scanning the pub. A room where the images within the ten-year-old landscape holograms covering the walls were diminishing to blurred smears, their colours fading. The naked rock they covered would be less depressing. Most of the scuffed composite and aluminum tables were occupied. Groups of men sat hunched over their drinks and talked in low tones. Nearly a quarter of the customers were wearing ship-suits, bright and exotic compared to the clothes favoured by Koblat’s residents.
Jed located the crew from the Rameses X , the starship’s name stencilled neatly on their breast pockets. Their captain was with them, a middle-aged woman with the silver star on her epaulette. He went over.
“I wonder if I could talk to you, ma’am?”
She glanced up at him, faintly suspicious at the respectful tone.
“What is it?”
“I have a friend who would like to go to Valisk.”
The captain burst out laughing. Jed flushed as the rest of the crew groaned, trading infuriatingly superior expressions.
“Well, son, I can certainly understand how come your friend is so interested in young Kiera.” She winked broadly.
Jed’s embarrassment deepened, which must have been obvious to all of them. True, he had spent hours on his processor block with a graphics program, altering the image from the recording. Now the block’s small AV pillar could project her lying beside him on the bed at night, or looming over him smiling. At first he’d worried he was being disrespectful, but she would understand the need he had for her. The love. She knew all about love, in its many forms. It was all she spoke of.
“It’s what she offers,” he stammered helplessly. “That’s what we’re interested in.”
That just brought another round of hearty laughter from the group.
“Please,” he said. “Can you take us there?”
The humour sank from her face. “Listen, son, take the advice of an older woman. That recording: it’s just a big bullshit con. They want you there so they can possess you, that’s all. There’s no paradise waiting at the end of the rainbow.”
“Have you been there?” he asked stiffly.
“No. No, I haven’t. So you’re right, I can’t say for certain. Let’s just put it down to a healthy dose of cynicism; everybody catches it when they get older.” She turned back to her drink.
“Will you take me?”
“No. Look, son, even if I was crazy enough to fly to Valisk, do you have any idea how much it would cost you to charter a starship to take you?”
He shook his head mutely.
“From here, about a quarter of a million fuseodollars. Do you have that kind of money?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are then. Now stop wasting my time.”
“Do you know anyone who would take us, someone who believes in Kiera?”
“Goddamnit!” She screwed around in her chair to glare at him. “Can’t you inbred morons pick up a simple hint when it’s smacked you in the face?”
“Kiera said you’d hate us for listening to her.”
The captain let out an astonished snort of breath. “I don’t believe this. Don’t you see how gullible you are? I’m doing you a favour.”
“I didn’t ask you to. And why are you so blind to what she says?”
“Blind ? Fuck you, you teeny shit.”
“Because you are. You’re scared it’s true, that she’s right.”
She stared at him for a long moment, the rest of the crew fixing him with hostile stares. They’d probably beat him up in a minute. Jed didn’t care anymore. He hated her as much as he did Digger and all the others with closed minds and dead hearts.
“All right,” the captain whispered. “In your case I’ll make an exception.”
“No,” one of the crew said, his hand going out to hold her arm. “You can’t, he’s only a kid with a hard-on for the girl.”
She shook off the restraining hand and brought out a processor block. “I was going to hand this over to the Confederation Navy, even though it would be difficult to explain away given our current flight schedule. But I think you can have it instead, now.” She took a flek from its slot in the block and slapped it into an astonished Jed’s hand. “Say hello to Kiera for me. If you aren’t too busy screaming while they possess you.”
Chairs were pushed back noisily. The crew of the Rameses X left their unfinished drinks on the table and marched out.
Jed stood at the centre of a now-silent pub, every eye locked on him. He didn’t even notice, he was staring raptly at the little black flek resting in his palm as if it were the key to the fountain of youth. Which in a way, he supposed, it was.
The Levêque was orbiting fifteen thousand kilometres above Norfolk, its complete sensor suite extended to sweep the planet. Despite the Confederation Navy’s hunger for information, little data was returning. Slow cyclonic swirls of red cloud had mushroomed from the islands, mating then smoothing out into a placid sheet, sealing the world behind a uniform twilight nimbus. Small ivory tufts of cirrocumulus swam above the polar zones for a few hours, the last defiant speckling of alien colour; but in time even they fell to melt into the veil.
The consolidation was five hours old when the change began. Levêque ’s officers noticed the cloud’s light emission level was increasing. The frigate’s captain decided to play safe and ordered them to raise their orbit by another twenty thousand kilometres. By the time their main fusion drive ignited, the crimson canopy was blazing brighter than any firestorm. They ascended at five gees, badly worried by the glare expanding rapidly across the stars behind them. Gravitonic sensors reported discordant ripples within the planetary mass below. If the readings were truthful, then the world should be breaking apart. Heavily filtered optical-band sensors revealed the planet’s geometry remained unchanged.
Seven gees, and the cloud’s surface was kindling to the intensity of a nuclear furnace.
Luca Comar looked upwards in a dreamy daze. The red cloud guarding the sky above Cricklade manor’s steep roof was writhing violently, its gold and crimson underbelly caught by potent microburst vortices. Huge churning strips were being torn open, allowing a fierce white light to slam down. He flung his arms wide, howling a rapturous welcome.
Energy stormed through him at an almost painful rate, bursting from some non-point within to vanish into the raging sky. The woman beside him was performing the same act, her features straining with effort and incredulity. In his mind he could feel the possessed all across Norfolk uniting in this final supreme sacrament.
Boiling fragments of cloud plunged through the air at giddy velocities; corkscrew lightning bolts snapping between them. Their red tint was fading, sinking behind the flamboyant dawn irradiating the universe beyond the atmosphere.
A thick, heavy light poured over Luca. It penetrated straight through his body. Through the mossy grass. Through the soil. The whole world surrendered to it. Luca’s thoughts were trapped by the invasion, unable to think of anything but sustaining the moment. He hung suspended from reality as the last surge of energy unwound through his cells.
Silence.
Luca slowly let out his breath. He opened his eyes cautiously. The clouds had calmed, reverting to rumpled white smears. Warm mellow light was shining over the wolds. There was no sun, no single source point, it came from the boundary of the enclosed universe itself. Shining equally, everywhere.
And they’d gone. He could no longer hear the souls in the beyond. Those piercing pleas and promises had vanished. There was no way back, no treacherous chink in the folds of this fresh continuum. He was free inside his new body.
He looked at the woman, who was glancing around in stupefaction.
“We’ve done it,” he whispered. “We escaped.”
She smiled tentatively.
He held out his arms, and concentrated. Not the smoke-snorting knight again; the moment required something more dignified. Soft golden cloth settled around his skin, an imperial toga, befitting his mood.
“Oh, yes. Yes!”
The energistic ability was still there, the imposition of will upon matter. But now the cloth had a stronger, firmer texture to the artefacts he’d created before.
Before . . . Luca Comar laughed. In another universe. Another life.
This time it would be different. They could establish their nirvana here. And it would last forever.
The cluster of five survey satellites from the Levêque gradually spread apart as they glided through the section of space where Norfolk should be. Communications links beamed a huge flow of information back to the frigate. Every sensor they had was switched to maximum sensitivity. Two distinct spectrums of sunlight fell on them. Tremulous waves of solar ions dusted their receptors. Cosmic radiation bombardment was standard.
There was nothing else. No gravity field. No magnetosphere. No atmospheric gas. Space-time’s quantum signature was perfectly normal.
All that remained of Norfolk was the memory.
When it was discovered in 2125, Nyvan was immediately incorporated into the celebration of hope which was sweeping Earth in the wake of Felicity’s discovery. The second terracompatible planet to be found, a beautiful verdant virgin land, proof the first hadn’t been a fluke. Everybody on Earth wanted to escape out to the stars. And they wanted to go there now. That, ultimately, proved its downfall.
By then, people had finally realized the arcologies weren’t going to be a temporary shelter from the ruined climate, somewhere to stay while Govcentral cooled the atmosphere, cleaned up the pollution, and put the weather patterns back to rights. The tainted clouds and armada storms were here to stay. Anyone who wanted to live under an open sky would have to leave and find a new one.
In the interests of fairness and maintaining its own shaky command over individual state administrations, Govcentral agreed that everyone had the right to leave, without favouritism. It was that last worthy clause, included to pacify several vocal minorities, which in practice meant that colonists would have to be a multi-cultural, multi-racial mix fully representative of the planet’s population. No limits were placed on the numbers buying starship tickets, they just had to be balanced. For those states too poor to fill up their quota, Govcentral provided assisted placement schemes so the richer states couldn’t complain they were being unfairly limited. A typical political compromise.
By and large, it worked for Nyvan and the other terracompatible planets being sought out by the new ZTT drive ships. The first decades of interstellar colonization were heady times, when common achievement easily outweighed the old ethnic enmities. Nyvan and its early siblings played host to a unity of purpose rarely seen before.
It didn’t last. After the frontier had been tamed and the pioneering spirit flickered into extinction the ancient rivalries lumbered to the fore once again. Earth’s colonial governance gave way to local administrations on a dozen planets, and politicians began to adopt the worst jingoistic aspects of late twentieth-century nationalism, leading the mob behind them with absurd ease. This time there were no safeguards of seas and geographical borders between the diverse populations. Religions, cultures, skins, ideologies, and languages were all squeezed up tight in the pinch chamber of urban conglomeration. Civil unrest was the inevitable result, ruining lives and crippling economies.
Overall, the problem was solved in 2156 by the Govcentral state of California, who sponsored New California, the first ethnic-streaming colony, open only to native Californians. Although initially controversial, the trend was swiftly taken up by the other states. This second wave of colonies suffered none of the strife so prevalent among the first, clearing the way for the mass immigration of the Great Dispersal.
While the new ethnic-streaming worlds successfully absorbed Earth’s surplus population and flourished accordingly, the earlier colonies slowly lost ground both culturally and economically: a false dawn shading to a perpetual twilight.
“What happened to the asteroids?” Lawrence Dillon asked.
Quinn was gazing thoughtfully at the images which the Tantu ’s sensors were throwing onto the hemisphere of holoscreens at the foot of his acceleration couch. In total, eleven asteroids had been manoeuvred into orbit around Nyvan, their ores mined to provide raw material for the planet’s industries. Ordinarily, they would develop into healthy mercantile settlements with a flotilla of industrial stations.
The frigate’s sensors showed that eight of them were more-or-less standard knots of electromagnetic activity, giving off a strong infrared emission. The remaining three were cold and dark. Tantu ’s high-resolution optical sensors focused on the closest of the defunct rocks, revealing wrecked machinery clinging to the crumpled grey surface. One of them even had a counter-rotating spaceport disk, though it no longer revolved; the spindle was bent, and the gloomy structure punctured with holes.
“They had a lot of national wars here,” Quinn said.
Lawrence frowned at him, thoughts cloudy with incomprehension.
“There’s a lot of different people live here,” Quinn explained. “They don’t get on too good, so they fight a lot.”
“If they hate each other, why don’t they all leave?”
“I don’t know. Ask them.”
“Who?”
“Shut the fuck up, Lawrence, I’m trying to think. Dwyer, has anyone seen us yet?”
“Yes, the detector satellites picked us up straightaway. We’ve had three separate transponder interrogations so far; they were from different defence network command centres. Everyone seemed satisfied with our identification code this time.”
“Good. Graper, I want you to be our communications officer.”
“Yes, Quinn.” Graper let the eagerness show in his voice, anxious to prove his worth.
“Stick with the cover we decided. Call each of those military centres and tell the bastards we’ve been assigned a monitor mission in this system by the Confederation Navy. We’ll be staying in high orbit until further notice, and if any of them want fire support against possessed targets we’ll be happy to provide it.”
“I’m on it, Quinn.” He began issuing orders to the flight computer.
“Dwyer,” Quinn said. “Get me a channel into Nyvan’s communications net.” He floated away from his velvet acceleration couch and used a stikpad to steady himself in front of his big command console.
“Er, Quinn, this is weird, the sensors are showing me like fifty communications platforms in geosync,” Dwyer said nervously. He was using grab hoops to hold himself in front of his flight station, his face centimetres from a glowing holoscreen, as though the closer he could get the more understanding of its data he would have. “The computer says they’ve got nineteen separate nets on this world, some of them don’t even hook together.”
“Yeah, so? I told you, dickbrain, they got a shitload of different nations here.”
“Which one do you want?”
Quinn thought back, picturing the man, his mannerisms, voice, accent. “Is there a North American-ethnic nation?”
Dwyer consulted the information on the holoscreen. “I got five. There’s Tonala, New Dominica, New Georgia, Quebec, and the Islamic Texas Republic.”
“Gimmie the New Georgia one.” Information began to scroll up on his own holoscreen. He studied it for a minute, then requested a directory function and loaded in a search program.
“Who is this guy, Quinn?” Lawrence asked.
“Name’s Twelve-T. He’s one mean fucker, a gang lord, runs a big operation down there. Any badass shit you want, you go to him for it.”
The search program finished its run. Quinn loaded the eddress it had found for him.
“Yeah?” a voice asked.
“I want to talk to Twelve-T.”
“Crazy ass mother, ain’t no fucker got that handle living here.”
“Listen, shitbrain, this is his public eddress. He’s there.”
“Yeah, so you know him, datavise him.”
“Not possible.”
“Yeah? Then he don’t know you. Any mother he need to rap with knows his private code.”
“Okay, the magic word is Banneth. And if you don’t think that’s magic, trace where this call is coming from. Now tell the man, because if I come calling, you’re going out hurting.”
Dwyer gave another myopic squint at his displays. “He’s tracing the call. Back to the satellite already. Hot program.”
“I expect they use it a lot,” Quinn muttered.
“You got a problem up there, motherfucker?” a new voice asked. It was almost as Quinn remembered it, a low purr, too damaged to be smooth. Quinn had seen the throat scar which made it that way.
“No problem at all. What I got up here is a proposition.”
“Where you at, man? What is this monk shit? You ain’t Banneth.”
“No.” Quinn swayed forwards slowly towards the camera lens in the centre of the console and pulled his hood right back. “Run your visual file search program.”
“Oh, yeah. You used to be Banneth’s little rat runner; her whore, too. I remember. So what you want here, ratty?”
“A deal.”
“What you got to trade?”
“You know what I’m riding in?”
“Sure. Lucky Vin ran a trace, he’s pissin’ liquid nitrogen right now.”
“It could be yours.”
“No shit?”
“That’s right.”
“What’ve I gotta do for it, hump you?”
“No, I just want to trade it in. That’s all.”
The whisper lost its cool. “You want to trade in a fucking Confederation Navy frigate? What the fuck for?”
“I need to talk to you about that. But there’s some good quality hardware on board. You’ll come out ahead.”
“Talk, motherfucker? If your hardware’s so shit-hot, how come you wanna dump it?”
“God’s Brother doesn’t always ride to war. There are other ways to bring His word to the faithless.”
“Cut that voodoo shit, man. Damn, I hate that sect shit you arcology freaks use. Ain’t no God, so he sure as shit can’t have no Brother.”
“Try telling that to the possessed.”
“Motherfuck! Smartass motherfucker! That’s what you are, that’s all you are.”
“Do you want to deal or not?” Quinn knew he would; what gang lord could resist a frigate?
“I ain’t promising shit up front.”
“That’s cool. Now I need to know which asteroid to dock with. And it’s going to have to be one which doesn’t ask too many questions. Have you got any weight in orbit?”
“You know it, man, that’s why you come to me. You might talk like you the King of Kulu’s brother, but here it’s me who’s got the juice. And stink this, I don’t trust you, rat runner.”
“With this much firepower behind me, think how much I care. Start fixing things.”
“Fuck you. A strike like this is gonna take a few days to set up, man.”
“You have forty-eight hours; then I want a docking bay number flashing in front of me. If not, I will smite you from the face of the world.”
“Will you cut that freaky crap—”
Quinn cancelled the circuit and threw his head back laughing.
It had only taken a few hours for the screen of red cloud to engulf the sky above Exnall. The tenuous beginnings of the early morning had been supplanted by billowing masses of solid vapour sweeping up from the south. Thunder arrived in accompaniment, bass grumbles which seemed to circle and swoop around the town like jittery birds. There was no telling where the sun was now, but its light still seemed to slip through the covering to illuminate the streets in natural tones.
Moyo marched down Maingreen on his mission to find some kind of transport for Stephanie’s children. The more he thought about the prospect, the happier it made him. She was right, as always, it did give him something positive to do. And no, he didn’t want to spend eternity in Exnall.
He passed the doughnut café and the baseball game in the park, oblivious to either. If he searched with his mind, he could perceive the buildings around him like foggy shadows; all space was dark, while matter was amended to a translucent white gauze. Individual objects were hard to distinguish, and small ones almost impossible; but he thought he stood a good chance of recognizing something like a bus.
The street sweeper was busy again. A man in a grey jacket and cloth cap, pushing his broom in front of him as he made his way slowly along the pavement. Every day he had appeared. He never did anything else but sweep the pavements, never talked to anybody, never responded to any attempts at conversation.
Moyo was slowly coming to learn that not all of Exnall’s possessed were adapting readily to their new circumstances. Some, like the sports nuts and café owners were obsessively filling every moment of their day with activity no matter how spurious, while others would amble around in a listless mockery of their earlier existence. That assessment put his own labours perilously close to the apathetic ones.
A dense collection of shadows at the rear of one of the larger stores caught his attention. When he walked around the building there was a long van parked in the loading bay. It had suffered some damage in the riot; struck by white fire the front two tyres had melted into puddles of sticky plastic, the navy-blue bodywork was blackened, and in some places cracked open, the windshield was smashed. But it was certainly big enough.
He stared at the first tyre, visualizing it whole and functional. Not an illusion, but how the solid matter should actually be structured. The hardened plastic puddle started to flow, amoebic buds swelling up to engulf the naked hub.
“Yo there, man. Having some fun?”
Moyo had been so involved with the tyre he hadn’t noticed the man approaching. At first sight the man looked as if he’d grown a dark brown mane; his beard came down to his waist as did the corkscrew locks of his luxuriant hair. A pair of tiny amber hexagonal glasses which were almost curtained by tresses seemed perversely prominent. The flares of his purple velvet trousers were embellished with tiny silver bells which chimed with each step, not in tune, but certainly in keeping.
“Not exactly. Is this your van?”
“Hey, property is theft, man.”
“Property is what?”
“Theft. You’re like stealing from what rightfully belongs to all people. That van is an inanimate object. Unless you’re into a metallic version of Gaia—which personally I’m not. However, just because it’s inert that doesn’t mean we can abuse its intrinsic value which is the ability to carry cats where they want to go.”
“Cats? I just want it to ferry some children out of here.”
“Yeah well okay that’s cool, too. But what I like mean is that it’s like community property. It was built by people, so all people should share it equally.”
“It was built by cybersystems.”
“Oh, no, that’s real heavy-duty corporate shit. Man, they’ve got into your skull big-time. Here, take a toot, Mr Suit, take yourself out of yourself.” He held out a fat reefer which was already alight and sending out a pungent sweetness.
“No thanks.”
“Takes your mind to other realms.”
“I’ve just got back from one, thank you. I have no intention of returning.”
“Yeah, right, dig your point. The baddest trip of them all.”
Moyo couldn’t quite make out what he was confronting. The man didn’t seem like one of the apathetic ones. On the other hand, he obviously hadn’t managed to adapt very well. Perhaps he came from a pre-technology age, where education was minimal and superstition ruled everyone’s life.
“What era do you come from?”
“Ho! The greatest one there ever was. I dug the era of peace, when we were busy fighting the establishment for all the freedom you cats just take for granted. Heck, I was at Woodstock, man. Can you dig that?”
“Um, I’m very happy for you. So you don’t mind if I rebuild the van, then?”
“Rebuild? What are you, some kind of anti-anarchist?”
“I’m someone who’s got children to look after. Unless you’d rather they were tortured by Ekelund’s people.”
The man’s body bucked as if he’d been struck a physical blow; his arms wove in strange jerky motions in front of him. Moyo didn’t think it was a dance.
“I hate your hostility groove, but I dig your motivation. That’s cool. A square cat like you is probably having a lot of trouble adjusting to this situation.”
None of the preparations altered the final outcome. Forty-seven Arnstadt navy ships were destroyed, along with fifteen voidhawks. The remaining voidhawks swallowed away, withdrawing back to the gas giant.
The Organization fleet’s transport starships moved unopposed into low orbit, and spaceplanes began to ferry a small army of possessed down to the surface. Like all modern Confederation planets, Arnstadt had few soldiers. There were several marine brigades, which were mainly trained in space warfare techniques and covert mission procedures. Wars in this era were fought between starships. The days of foreign invasion forces marching across enemy territory had vanished before the end of the twenty-first century.
With its SD network reduced to radioactive meteorites flaring through bruised skies, Arnstadt was incapable of offering the slightest resistance to the possessed marching down out of their spaceplanes. Small towns were infiltrated first, increasing the numbers of possessed available to move on to larger towns. The area of captured ground began to increase exponentially.
Luigi Balsmao set up his headquarters in one of the orbiting asteroid settlements. Information on the people captured by the advancing possessed was datavised up to the asteroid where the structure coordination programs written by Emmet Mordden decided if they should be possessed or not. Organization lieutenants were appointed, their authority backed up by the firepower of fleet starships in low orbit.
With the subjugation of the planet confidently under way, Luigi split half of the fleet into squadrons and deployed them against the system’s asteroid settlements. Only the Edenist habitats were left alone; after Yosemite, Capone wasn’t about to risk a second defeat on such a scale.
Starships were dispatched back to New California, and fresh cargo ships began to arrive soon, bringing with them the basic components for a new SD network along with other equipment to help consolidate the Organization’s advance. Rover reporters were allowed to see carefully selected sections of the planet under its new masters: children left non-possessed to run around freely, possessed and non-possessed working side by side to restart the economy, Luigi stamping down hard on any possessed who didn’t acknowledge the Organization’s leadership.
News of the successful invasion swept across the Confederation, backed up by sensevise recordings from the reporters. Surprise was total. One star system’s government—no matter what its nature—taking over another was a concept always considered totally impossible. Capone had proved it wasn’t. In doing so he set off a chain reaction of panic. Commentators began to talk about planetary level exponential curves, the most extreme showing the entire Confederation falling to the Organization within six months as the industrial resources of more and more systems were absorbed by Capone’s empire.
On the Assembly floor, demands that the Confederation Navy should intervene and destroy the Organization fleet became almost continuous. First Admiral Aleksandrovich had to make several appearances to explain how impractical the notion was. The best the navy could do, he said, was to seek out the source of Capone’s antimatter and prevent a third system from being taken over. Arnstadt was already lost. Capone had secured a victory which couldn’t be reversed without a great loss of life. At this stage, such casualties were wholly unacceptable. He also pointed out that, sadly, a great many non-possessed crews were cooperating with the Organization to operate their starships. Without them, the invasion of Arnstadt could never have happened. Perhaps, he suggested, the Assembly should consider introducing an emergency act to deal with any such traitors. Such legislation might, in future, discourage captains seeking to sign up with Capone for short term gain.
“Escort duties?” André Duchamp asked wearily. “I thought we were here to help defend New California itself. What exactly does this escort duty entail?”
“Monterey hasn’t given me a detailed briefing,” Iain Girardi said. “But you will simply be protecting cargo ships from attack by the Confederation Navy. Which is exactly what your contract stipulated.”
“Hardly,” Madeleine growled. “Nor does it say anywhere that we help a deranged dictator who wiped out an entire fucking planet. I say jump out, Captain. Power up the patterning nodes right now and get the fuck out of here while we still can.”
“I would have thought this was a more appealing task for you,” Iain Girardi said. His acceleration couch webbing peeled back, and he drifted off the cushioning. “The majority of the crews in the cargo ships are non-possessed, and you won’t be permanently in range of the Organization’s SD platforms. If anything, we’re giving you an easier job with less risk for the same money.”
“Where would we be going?” André asked.
“Arnstadt. The Organization is shipping industrial equipment there to help restart the planetary economy.”
“If they hadn’t blown it all to shit in the first place they wouldn’t need to restart it,” Madeleine said.
André shushed her impatiently. “It seems fine to me,” he told Iain Girardi. “However, the ship will require some maintenance work before we can undertake such an assignment. An escort flight is very different from supplementing planetary defences.”
Iain Girardi’s humour appeared strained for the first time. “Yes. I’ll have to discuss the nature of the repairs with Monterey.” He datavised the flight computer for a communications channel.
André waited with a neutral smile.
“The Organization will bring the Villeneuve’s Revenge up to full combat-capable status,” Iain Girardi announced. “Your hull and sensor suite will be repaired by us, but you must meet the cost of secondary systems.”
André shrugged. “Take it out of our fee.”
“Very well. Please dock at Monterey’s spaceport, bay VB757. I shall disembark there; you’ll be assigned a liaison officer for the mission.”
“Non-possessed,” Desmond Lafoe said sharply.
“Of course. I believe they want you to take some reporters with you, as well. They’ll require access to your sensors during the flight.”
“Merde. Those filth. What for?”
“Mr Capone is highly focused on the need for accurate publicity. He wants the Confederation to see that he is not a real threat.”
“Unlike Arnstadt,” Madeleine said swiftly.
André piloted the starship down from its emergence zone to the large asteroid. Spaceflight traffic above New California was heavy: starships raced between the orbital asteroids and the emergence zones, spaceplanes and ion field flyers flew a constant shuttle service from the planet. Although the starship only had sixty-five per cent of its sensor clusters remaining, André kept them fully extended to gather what information he could.
When the flight computer told her Girardi was talking to Monterey again, Madeleine opened an encrypted channel to André: “I don’t think we should dock,” she datavised.
The captain extended the datavise to include Erick and Desmond. “Why not?”
“Look at those ships out there, if anything there’s more activity than before the planet was possessed. I didn’t realize how damn professional this Capone Organization is. We’re not going to get out of this, André, we’re in too deep. The second we dock they’ll swarm on board and possess us.”
“Then who will crew the ship for them? Non , they need us.”
“She has a point about the Organization’s size and motivation, though,” Erick datavised. “The possessed are dependent on us flying the warships, but what happens when there are no more worlds left to invade? Capone took Arnstadt in less than a day, and almost doubled his military resources doing so. He’s not going to stop now. If he and the rest of the possessed keep on winning at that rate, there will be no place left for non-possessed anywhere in the Confederation. That’s what we’ll be helping bring about.”
“I know this.” André cast a guilty glance at Girardi to make sure he wasn’t aware of the conversation. “That is why I agreed to the escort duty.”
“I don’t get it,” Madeleine said.
“Simple, ma chérie . The Organization repairs the Villeneuve’s Revenge for me, fills up our cryogenic fuel tanks, equips us with combat wasps, and sends us off on a flight. Then while we’re en route, we vanish. What is to stop us?”
“Their liaison officer, for a start,” Desmond said.
“Ha, one man. We can overcome him. Capone has made his greatest mistake in trying to dishonour André Duchamp. It is I who is using them now, for the benefit of my fellow man, comme il faut. I am no quisling. And I think we should make sure the reporters know of this savage blow we will strike against Capone.”
“You really intend to leave?” Madeleine asked.
“Naturally.”
Erick grinned, as best as his new skin would allow him. For once Duchamp’s devious nature could actually work for the best. He opened a new file in his neural nanonics memory cell and started recording the sensor images. CNIS would want to know about the Organization’s disposition; though he suspected the New California system would already be under full covert surveillance.
“What about Shane Brandes?” Desmond asked.
André’s face darkened. “What about him?”
“How long were you planning to leave him in zero-tau?”
“I could hardly drop him off at Chaumort, it was too small. We want a backwards planet where we can dump him in the middle of a desert or a jungle.”
“Lalonde would do,” Madeleine said under her breath.
“Well, if you’re looking for somewhere he won’t come back from,” Desmond offered maliciously.
“No,” Erick datavised.
“Why not?” André asked. “Give him to the Organization when we dock. It is an excellent idea. Shows them how loyal we are.”
“We kill him, or dump him. But not that. You didn’t see what they did to Bev.”
André flinched. “Very well. But I’m not hanging on to that bastard forever, his zero-tau is costing me power.”
Villeneuve’s Revenge docked in its designated bay, its crew alert for any treachery from the Organization. There was none to see. As Iain Girardi promised, maintenance teams immediately started to work on the starship’s battered hull and defunct sensors. It took eleven hours to withdraw the damaged sections and install new replacements. Integration and diagnostic checks took another two hours to complete.
Once André agreed that they were ready for escort duties, the Organization started loading combat wasps into the launch tubes. An airlock tube slid out from the docking bay wall to connect with the Villeneuve’s Revenge .
It was Desmond, armed with a machine pistol bought on Chaumort, who went down to the lower deck with Girardi. He made sure the tube was completely empty before opening the hatch and letting the Organization man out. Only when Girardi had swum down the length of the tube, and closed the far hatch behind him, did he give André the all-clear.
“Send your liaison officer through,” André datavised to the spaceport.
As arranged, the man wore nothing, towing his clothes in a small bag behind him as he came along the tube. Desmond made every test they could think of, requesting complex datavises from the liaison officer’s neural nanonics, exposing him to different processor blocks.
“I think he’s clean,” Desmond datavised.
Madeleine unlocked the manual latches on the hatch to the lower deck.
The liaison officer introduced himself as Kingsley Pryor. To Erick, his subdued behaviour and quiet, stumbling voice indicated someone emerging from shock.
“There will be a convoy of twelve cargo ships departing for Arnstadt in three hours,” Kingsley Pryor told them. “The Villeneuve’s Revenge will be one of five combat-capable ships escorting them. Your job is to defend them from any sneak attacks from Confederation Navy ships. If it does happen, they’ll probably use voidhawks against us.” He gave the bridge a thoughtful look. “I wasn’t told there would only be four of you. Is that enough to operate at full combat efficiency?”
“Of course it is,” André responded hotly. “We have survived much worse than a voidhawk attack.”
“Very well. There is one other thing you should know. The Organization is held together by fear and respect, obedience must be total. You have accepted our money and signed on with the fleet, we will not tolerate any disloyalty.”
“You come on my ship, and tell me—” André blustered loudly.
Kingsley Pryor held up a hand. Weak though the gesture was, it silenced Duchamp immediately. Something in the liaison officer’s manner put a great deal of weight behind his authority. “You signed a pact with the devil, Captain. Now I’m explaining the small print. You don’t trust us, fair enough; we don’t really trust you either. I’m sure that now you’ve seen New California firsthand you’ve realized just how powerful and dedicated the Organization is, and you’re having second thoughts about supporting us. Perfectly natural. After all, it would be very easy for a starship to disappear in the direction of the Confederation. Let me try and dissuade you. While your ship was being repaired, a nuclear explosive was included inside one of the new components. It has a seven-hour timer which must be reset by a code. I do not have that code, so you cannot use debrief nanonics to extract it from me. A liaison officer in one of the other escort ships will transmit that code at us every three hours, resetting the timer. In turn I will transmit the code I have been given at the other ships, which have been similarly modified. If all of us stay together, there will be no problem. If one ship leaves, they will be killing themselves and the crew of another ship.”
“Remove it now!” André shouted furiously. “I will not fly under such a blackmail threat.”
“It is not blackmail, Captain, it is enforcement, making sure you abide by the terms of your contract. I believe the argument goes along the lines of: If you intended to keep the agreement you made with us you have nothing to worry about.”
“I will not fly with a bomb on board. That is final!”
“Then they will come on board, and possess you. And another crew will be found. It is the ship and its capability they want, Captain, not you as an individual.”
“This is intolerable!”
For a moment a real anger shone in Kingsley Pryor’s eyes. He sneered at André. “So is a free man agreeing to help Capone, Captain.” Then the emotion was gone, leaving only the meek expression in its wake. “Shall we get the reporters on board now? We haven’t got too much time before we have to be at the jump coordinate.”
Jed Hinton was still a hundred metres from the pub when he knelt down and took the red handkerchief off his ankle. Koblat’s adults were starting to get nettled by Deadnight; kids that followed the cause were being hassled. Nothing serious, some jostling in public places, arguments at home. The usual crap.
Digger, of course, despised the recording; descending into a rage whenever it was mentioned. For once Jed enjoyed a guilty delight at the way he intimidated Miri and Navar, forbidding them to have anything to do with it. Without realizing, he’d altered the political structure of the family. Now it was Jed and Gari who were the favoured ones, the ones who could access Kiera Salter, and talk about her ideas with their friends, and know the taste of freedom.
Jed walked into the Blue Fountain, making out like it was cool for him to be there. Normally he’d be anywhere else, it was Digger’s pub. But Digger was busy these days; not working the tunnelling units, but out at the spaceport doing maintenance on the machinery in the docking bays. There were three shifts a day now, supporting the increasing number of flights. Yet although everyone knew perfectly well starships were arriving and departing several times a day, there was no official log. Three times he’d accessed the net and asked the spaceport register for a list of ships docked only to be told there were none.
Fascinated, the Deadnight kids had asked around, and together they’d pieced together the basics of the quarantine-busting operation. They had all been excited that day, starships arriving illegally was perfect for them. Beth had smiled at him and said: “Bloody hell, we might just make it to Valisk, after all.” Then she’d hugged him. She’d never done that before, not in that way.
He asked the barman for a beer, slowly scanning the pub. A room where the images within the ten-year-old landscape holograms covering the walls were diminishing to blurred smears, their colours fading. The naked rock they covered would be less depressing. Most of the scuffed composite and aluminum tables were occupied. Groups of men sat hunched over their drinks and talked in low tones. Nearly a quarter of the customers were wearing ship-suits, bright and exotic compared to the clothes favoured by Koblat’s residents.
Jed located the crew from the Rameses X , the starship’s name stencilled neatly on their breast pockets. Their captain was with them, a middle-aged woman with the silver star on her epaulette. He went over.
“I wonder if I could talk to you, ma’am?”
She glanced up at him, faintly suspicious at the respectful tone.
“What is it?”
“I have a friend who would like to go to Valisk.”
The captain burst out laughing. Jed flushed as the rest of the crew groaned, trading infuriatingly superior expressions.
“Well, son, I can certainly understand how come your friend is so interested in young Kiera.” She winked broadly.
Jed’s embarrassment deepened, which must have been obvious to all of them. True, he had spent hours on his processor block with a graphics program, altering the image from the recording. Now the block’s small AV pillar could project her lying beside him on the bed at night, or looming over him smiling. At first he’d worried he was being disrespectful, but she would understand the need he had for her. The love. She knew all about love, in its many forms. It was all she spoke of.
“It’s what she offers,” he stammered helplessly. “That’s what we’re interested in.”
That just brought another round of hearty laughter from the group.
“Please,” he said. “Can you take us there?”
The humour sank from her face. “Listen, son, take the advice of an older woman. That recording: it’s just a big bullshit con. They want you there so they can possess you, that’s all. There’s no paradise waiting at the end of the rainbow.”
“Have you been there?” he asked stiffly.
“No. No, I haven’t. So you’re right, I can’t say for certain. Let’s just put it down to a healthy dose of cynicism; everybody catches it when they get older.” She turned back to her drink.
“Will you take me?”
“No. Look, son, even if I was crazy enough to fly to Valisk, do you have any idea how much it would cost you to charter a starship to take you?”
He shook his head mutely.
“From here, about a quarter of a million fuseodollars. Do you have that kind of money?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are then. Now stop wasting my time.”
“Do you know anyone who would take us, someone who believes in Kiera?”
“Goddamnit!” She screwed around in her chair to glare at him. “Can’t you inbred morons pick up a simple hint when it’s smacked you in the face?”
“Kiera said you’d hate us for listening to her.”
The captain let out an astonished snort of breath. “I don’t believe this. Don’t you see how gullible you are? I’m doing you a favour.”
“I didn’t ask you to. And why are you so blind to what she says?”
“Blind ? Fuck you, you teeny shit.”
“Because you are. You’re scared it’s true, that she’s right.”
She stared at him for a long moment, the rest of the crew fixing him with hostile stares. They’d probably beat him up in a minute. Jed didn’t care anymore. He hated her as much as he did Digger and all the others with closed minds and dead hearts.
“All right,” the captain whispered. “In your case I’ll make an exception.”
“No,” one of the crew said, his hand going out to hold her arm. “You can’t, he’s only a kid with a hard-on for the girl.”
She shook off the restraining hand and brought out a processor block. “I was going to hand this over to the Confederation Navy, even though it would be difficult to explain away given our current flight schedule. But I think you can have it instead, now.” She took a flek from its slot in the block and slapped it into an astonished Jed’s hand. “Say hello to Kiera for me. If you aren’t too busy screaming while they possess you.”
Chairs were pushed back noisily. The crew of the Rameses X left their unfinished drinks on the table and marched out.
Jed stood at the centre of a now-silent pub, every eye locked on him. He didn’t even notice, he was staring raptly at the little black flek resting in his palm as if it were the key to the fountain of youth. Which in a way, he supposed, it was.
The Levêque was orbiting fifteen thousand kilometres above Norfolk, its complete sensor suite extended to sweep the planet. Despite the Confederation Navy’s hunger for information, little data was returning. Slow cyclonic swirls of red cloud had mushroomed from the islands, mating then smoothing out into a placid sheet, sealing the world behind a uniform twilight nimbus. Small ivory tufts of cirrocumulus swam above the polar zones for a few hours, the last defiant speckling of alien colour; but in time even they fell to melt into the veil.
The consolidation was five hours old when the change began. Levêque ’s officers noticed the cloud’s light emission level was increasing. The frigate’s captain decided to play safe and ordered them to raise their orbit by another twenty thousand kilometres. By the time their main fusion drive ignited, the crimson canopy was blazing brighter than any firestorm. They ascended at five gees, badly worried by the glare expanding rapidly across the stars behind them. Gravitonic sensors reported discordant ripples within the planetary mass below. If the readings were truthful, then the world should be breaking apart. Heavily filtered optical-band sensors revealed the planet’s geometry remained unchanged.
Seven gees, and the cloud’s surface was kindling to the intensity of a nuclear furnace.
Luca Comar looked upwards in a dreamy daze. The red cloud guarding the sky above Cricklade manor’s steep roof was writhing violently, its gold and crimson underbelly caught by potent microburst vortices. Huge churning strips were being torn open, allowing a fierce white light to slam down. He flung his arms wide, howling a rapturous welcome.
Energy stormed through him at an almost painful rate, bursting from some non-point within to vanish into the raging sky. The woman beside him was performing the same act, her features straining with effort and incredulity. In his mind he could feel the possessed all across Norfolk uniting in this final supreme sacrament.
Boiling fragments of cloud plunged through the air at giddy velocities; corkscrew lightning bolts snapping between them. Their red tint was fading, sinking behind the flamboyant dawn irradiating the universe beyond the atmosphere.
A thick, heavy light poured over Luca. It penetrated straight through his body. Through the mossy grass. Through the soil. The whole world surrendered to it. Luca’s thoughts were trapped by the invasion, unable to think of anything but sustaining the moment. He hung suspended from reality as the last surge of energy unwound through his cells.
Silence.
Luca slowly let out his breath. He opened his eyes cautiously. The clouds had calmed, reverting to rumpled white smears. Warm mellow light was shining over the wolds. There was no sun, no single source point, it came from the boundary of the enclosed universe itself. Shining equally, everywhere.
And they’d gone. He could no longer hear the souls in the beyond. Those piercing pleas and promises had vanished. There was no way back, no treacherous chink in the folds of this fresh continuum. He was free inside his new body.
He looked at the woman, who was glancing around in stupefaction.
“We’ve done it,” he whispered. “We escaped.”
She smiled tentatively.
He held out his arms, and concentrated. Not the smoke-snorting knight again; the moment required something more dignified. Soft golden cloth settled around his skin, an imperial toga, befitting his mood.
“Oh, yes. Yes!”
The energistic ability was still there, the imposition of will upon matter. But now the cloth had a stronger, firmer texture to the artefacts he’d created before.
Before . . . Luca Comar laughed. In another universe. Another life.
This time it would be different. They could establish their nirvana here. And it would last forever.
The cluster of five survey satellites from the Levêque gradually spread apart as they glided through the section of space where Norfolk should be. Communications links beamed a huge flow of information back to the frigate. Every sensor they had was switched to maximum sensitivity. Two distinct spectrums of sunlight fell on them. Tremulous waves of solar ions dusted their receptors. Cosmic radiation bombardment was standard.
There was nothing else. No gravity field. No magnetosphere. No atmospheric gas. Space-time’s quantum signature was perfectly normal.
All that remained of Norfolk was the memory.
When it was discovered in 2125, Nyvan was immediately incorporated into the celebration of hope which was sweeping Earth in the wake of Felicity’s discovery. The second terracompatible planet to be found, a beautiful verdant virgin land, proof the first hadn’t been a fluke. Everybody on Earth wanted to escape out to the stars. And they wanted to go there now. That, ultimately, proved its downfall.
By then, people had finally realized the arcologies weren’t going to be a temporary shelter from the ruined climate, somewhere to stay while Govcentral cooled the atmosphere, cleaned up the pollution, and put the weather patterns back to rights. The tainted clouds and armada storms were here to stay. Anyone who wanted to live under an open sky would have to leave and find a new one.
In the interests of fairness and maintaining its own shaky command over individual state administrations, Govcentral agreed that everyone had the right to leave, without favouritism. It was that last worthy clause, included to pacify several vocal minorities, which in practice meant that colonists would have to be a multi-cultural, multi-racial mix fully representative of the planet’s population. No limits were placed on the numbers buying starship tickets, they just had to be balanced. For those states too poor to fill up their quota, Govcentral provided assisted placement schemes so the richer states couldn’t complain they were being unfairly limited. A typical political compromise.
By and large, it worked for Nyvan and the other terracompatible planets being sought out by the new ZTT drive ships. The first decades of interstellar colonization were heady times, when common achievement easily outweighed the old ethnic enmities. Nyvan and its early siblings played host to a unity of purpose rarely seen before.
It didn’t last. After the frontier had been tamed and the pioneering spirit flickered into extinction the ancient rivalries lumbered to the fore once again. Earth’s colonial governance gave way to local administrations on a dozen planets, and politicians began to adopt the worst jingoistic aspects of late twentieth-century nationalism, leading the mob behind them with absurd ease. This time there were no safeguards of seas and geographical borders between the diverse populations. Religions, cultures, skins, ideologies, and languages were all squeezed up tight in the pinch chamber of urban conglomeration. Civil unrest was the inevitable result, ruining lives and crippling economies.
Overall, the problem was solved in 2156 by the Govcentral state of California, who sponsored New California, the first ethnic-streaming colony, open only to native Californians. Although initially controversial, the trend was swiftly taken up by the other states. This second wave of colonies suffered none of the strife so prevalent among the first, clearing the way for the mass immigration of the Great Dispersal.
While the new ethnic-streaming worlds successfully absorbed Earth’s surplus population and flourished accordingly, the earlier colonies slowly lost ground both culturally and economically: a false dawn shading to a perpetual twilight.
“What happened to the asteroids?” Lawrence Dillon asked.
Quinn was gazing thoughtfully at the images which the Tantu ’s sensors were throwing onto the hemisphere of holoscreens at the foot of his acceleration couch. In total, eleven asteroids had been manoeuvred into orbit around Nyvan, their ores mined to provide raw material for the planet’s industries. Ordinarily, they would develop into healthy mercantile settlements with a flotilla of industrial stations.
The frigate’s sensors showed that eight of them were more-or-less standard knots of electromagnetic activity, giving off a strong infrared emission. The remaining three were cold and dark. Tantu ’s high-resolution optical sensors focused on the closest of the defunct rocks, revealing wrecked machinery clinging to the crumpled grey surface. One of them even had a counter-rotating spaceport disk, though it no longer revolved; the spindle was bent, and the gloomy structure punctured with holes.
“They had a lot of national wars here,” Quinn said.
Lawrence frowned at him, thoughts cloudy with incomprehension.
“There’s a lot of different people live here,” Quinn explained. “They don’t get on too good, so they fight a lot.”
“If they hate each other, why don’t they all leave?”
“I don’t know. Ask them.”
“Who?”
“Shut the fuck up, Lawrence, I’m trying to think. Dwyer, has anyone seen us yet?”
“Yes, the detector satellites picked us up straightaway. We’ve had three separate transponder interrogations so far; they were from different defence network command centres. Everyone seemed satisfied with our identification code this time.”
“Good. Graper, I want you to be our communications officer.”
“Yes, Quinn.” Graper let the eagerness show in his voice, anxious to prove his worth.
“Stick with the cover we decided. Call each of those military centres and tell the bastards we’ve been assigned a monitor mission in this system by the Confederation Navy. We’ll be staying in high orbit until further notice, and if any of them want fire support against possessed targets we’ll be happy to provide it.”
“I’m on it, Quinn.” He began issuing orders to the flight computer.
“Dwyer,” Quinn said. “Get me a channel into Nyvan’s communications net.” He floated away from his velvet acceleration couch and used a stikpad to steady himself in front of his big command console.
“Er, Quinn, this is weird, the sensors are showing me like fifty communications platforms in geosync,” Dwyer said nervously. He was using grab hoops to hold himself in front of his flight station, his face centimetres from a glowing holoscreen, as though the closer he could get the more understanding of its data he would have. “The computer says they’ve got nineteen separate nets on this world, some of them don’t even hook together.”
“Yeah, so? I told you, dickbrain, they got a shitload of different nations here.”
“Which one do you want?”
Quinn thought back, picturing the man, his mannerisms, voice, accent. “Is there a North American-ethnic nation?”
Dwyer consulted the information on the holoscreen. “I got five. There’s Tonala, New Dominica, New Georgia, Quebec, and the Islamic Texas Republic.”
“Gimmie the New Georgia one.” Information began to scroll up on his own holoscreen. He studied it for a minute, then requested a directory function and loaded in a search program.
“Who is this guy, Quinn?” Lawrence asked.
“Name’s Twelve-T. He’s one mean fucker, a gang lord, runs a big operation down there. Any badass shit you want, you go to him for it.”
The search program finished its run. Quinn loaded the eddress it had found for him.
“Yeah?” a voice asked.
“I want to talk to Twelve-T.”
“Crazy ass mother, ain’t no fucker got that handle living here.”
“Listen, shitbrain, this is his public eddress. He’s there.”
“Yeah, so you know him, datavise him.”
“Not possible.”
“Yeah? Then he don’t know you. Any mother he need to rap with knows his private code.”
“Okay, the magic word is Banneth. And if you don’t think that’s magic, trace where this call is coming from. Now tell the man, because if I come calling, you’re going out hurting.”
Dwyer gave another myopic squint at his displays. “He’s tracing the call. Back to the satellite already. Hot program.”
“I expect they use it a lot,” Quinn muttered.
“You got a problem up there, motherfucker?” a new voice asked. It was almost as Quinn remembered it, a low purr, too damaged to be smooth. Quinn had seen the throat scar which made it that way.
“No problem at all. What I got up here is a proposition.”
“Where you at, man? What is this monk shit? You ain’t Banneth.”
“No.” Quinn swayed forwards slowly towards the camera lens in the centre of the console and pulled his hood right back. “Run your visual file search program.”
“Oh, yeah. You used to be Banneth’s little rat runner; her whore, too. I remember. So what you want here, ratty?”
“A deal.”
“What you got to trade?”
“You know what I’m riding in?”
“Sure. Lucky Vin ran a trace, he’s pissin’ liquid nitrogen right now.”
“It could be yours.”
“No shit?”
“That’s right.”
“What’ve I gotta do for it, hump you?”
“No, I just want to trade it in. That’s all.”
The whisper lost its cool. “You want to trade in a fucking Confederation Navy frigate? What the fuck for?”
“I need to talk to you about that. But there’s some good quality hardware on board. You’ll come out ahead.”
“Talk, motherfucker? If your hardware’s so shit-hot, how come you wanna dump it?”
“God’s Brother doesn’t always ride to war. There are other ways to bring His word to the faithless.”
“Cut that voodoo shit, man. Damn, I hate that sect shit you arcology freaks use. Ain’t no God, so he sure as shit can’t have no Brother.”
“Try telling that to the possessed.”
“Motherfuck! Smartass motherfucker! That’s what you are, that’s all you are.”
“Do you want to deal or not?” Quinn knew he would; what gang lord could resist a frigate?
“I ain’t promising shit up front.”
“That’s cool. Now I need to know which asteroid to dock with. And it’s going to have to be one which doesn’t ask too many questions. Have you got any weight in orbit?”
“You know it, man, that’s why you come to me. You might talk like you the King of Kulu’s brother, but here it’s me who’s got the juice. And stink this, I don’t trust you, rat runner.”
“With this much firepower behind me, think how much I care. Start fixing things.”
“Fuck you. A strike like this is gonna take a few days to set up, man.”
“You have forty-eight hours; then I want a docking bay number flashing in front of me. If not, I will smite you from the face of the world.”
“Will you cut that freaky crap—”
Quinn cancelled the circuit and threw his head back laughing.
It had only taken a few hours for the screen of red cloud to engulf the sky above Exnall. The tenuous beginnings of the early morning had been supplanted by billowing masses of solid vapour sweeping up from the south. Thunder arrived in accompaniment, bass grumbles which seemed to circle and swoop around the town like jittery birds. There was no telling where the sun was now, but its light still seemed to slip through the covering to illuminate the streets in natural tones.
Moyo marched down Maingreen on his mission to find some kind of transport for Stephanie’s children. The more he thought about the prospect, the happier it made him. She was right, as always, it did give him something positive to do. And no, he didn’t want to spend eternity in Exnall.
He passed the doughnut café and the baseball game in the park, oblivious to either. If he searched with his mind, he could perceive the buildings around him like foggy shadows; all space was dark, while matter was amended to a translucent white gauze. Individual objects were hard to distinguish, and small ones almost impossible; but he thought he stood a good chance of recognizing something like a bus.
The street sweeper was busy again. A man in a grey jacket and cloth cap, pushing his broom in front of him as he made his way slowly along the pavement. Every day he had appeared. He never did anything else but sweep the pavements, never talked to anybody, never responded to any attempts at conversation.
Moyo was slowly coming to learn that not all of Exnall’s possessed were adapting readily to their new circumstances. Some, like the sports nuts and café owners were obsessively filling every moment of their day with activity no matter how spurious, while others would amble around in a listless mockery of their earlier existence. That assessment put his own labours perilously close to the apathetic ones.
A dense collection of shadows at the rear of one of the larger stores caught his attention. When he walked around the building there was a long van parked in the loading bay. It had suffered some damage in the riot; struck by white fire the front two tyres had melted into puddles of sticky plastic, the navy-blue bodywork was blackened, and in some places cracked open, the windshield was smashed. But it was certainly big enough.
He stared at the first tyre, visualizing it whole and functional. Not an illusion, but how the solid matter should actually be structured. The hardened plastic puddle started to flow, amoebic buds swelling up to engulf the naked hub.
“Yo there, man. Having some fun?”
Moyo had been so involved with the tyre he hadn’t noticed the man approaching. At first sight the man looked as if he’d grown a dark brown mane; his beard came down to his waist as did the corkscrew locks of his luxuriant hair. A pair of tiny amber hexagonal glasses which were almost curtained by tresses seemed perversely prominent. The flares of his purple velvet trousers were embellished with tiny silver bells which chimed with each step, not in tune, but certainly in keeping.
“Not exactly. Is this your van?”
“Hey, property is theft, man.”
“Property is what?”
“Theft. You’re like stealing from what rightfully belongs to all people. That van is an inanimate object. Unless you’re into a metallic version of Gaia—which personally I’m not. However, just because it’s inert that doesn’t mean we can abuse its intrinsic value which is the ability to carry cats where they want to go.”
“Cats? I just want it to ferry some children out of here.”
“Yeah well okay that’s cool, too. But what I like mean is that it’s like community property. It was built by people, so all people should share it equally.”
“It was built by cybersystems.”
“Oh, no, that’s real heavy-duty corporate shit. Man, they’ve got into your skull big-time. Here, take a toot, Mr Suit, take yourself out of yourself.” He held out a fat reefer which was already alight and sending out a pungent sweetness.
“No thanks.”
“Takes your mind to other realms.”
“I’ve just got back from one, thank you. I have no intention of returning.”
“Yeah, right, dig your point. The baddest trip of them all.”
Moyo couldn’t quite make out what he was confronting. The man didn’t seem like one of the apathetic ones. On the other hand, he obviously hadn’t managed to adapt very well. Perhaps he came from a pre-technology age, where education was minimal and superstition ruled everyone’s life.
“What era do you come from?”
“Ho! The greatest one there ever was. I dug the era of peace, when we were busy fighting the establishment for all the freedom you cats just take for granted. Heck, I was at Woodstock, man. Can you dig that?”
“Um, I’m very happy for you. So you don’t mind if I rebuild the van, then?”
“Rebuild? What are you, some kind of anti-anarchist?”
“I’m someone who’s got children to look after. Unless you’d rather they were tortured by Ekelund’s people.”
The man’s body bucked as if he’d been struck a physical blow; his arms wove in strange jerky motions in front of him. Moyo didn’t think it was a dance.
“I hate your hostility groove, but I dig your motivation. That’s cool. A square cat like you is probably having a lot of trouble adjusting to this situation.”