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Three tall spires of filthy smoke were twisting up from the centre of the town. Flames burned at the base of one. Very bright flames. Whatever the building was, it glowed like molten iron.
“Oh, no,” Louise gasped. “Not here, too.” As she watched, one of the long river barges drifted past the last warehouse. Its decks were alight, the tarpaulin-covered cargo hold puffing out mushrooms of brown smoke. Louise guessed the barrels it carried were exploding. People were jumping off the prow, striking out for the bank.
“Now what?” Genevieve asked in a woeful voice.
“Let me think.” She had never considered that anywhere other than Cricklade was affected. But of course her father and that chilling young priest had stopped at Colsterworth first. And before that . . . A midwinter frost prickled her spine. Could it all have started at Boston? Everyone said an insurrection was beyond the Union’s ability to mount. Was the whole island to be conquered by these demons in human guise?
And if so, where do we go?
“Look!” Genevieve was pointing ahead.
Louise saw a Romany caravan being driven at considerable speed along one of the roads on the edge of town below them. The driver was standing on the seat, striking at the cob horse’s rump with a whip. It was a woman, her white dress flapping excitably in the wind.
“She’s running away,” Genevieve cried. “They can’t have got to her yet.”
The notion that they could join up with an adult who would be on their side was a glorious tonic for Louise. Even if it was just a simple Romany woman, she thought uncharitably. But then didn’t Romanies know about magic? The manor staff said they practised all sorts of dark arts. She might even know how to ward off the devils.
Louise took in the road ahead of the racing caravan with a keen sweep, trying to work out where they could meet it. There was nothing directly in front of the caravan, but three quarters of a mile from the town was a large farmhouse.
Frantic animals were charging out of the open farmyard gate into the meadows: pigs, heifers, a trio of shire-horses, even a Labrador. The house’s windows flashed brightly, emitting solid beams of blue-white light which appeared quite dazzling under the scarlet sky.
“She’s heading straight for them,” Louise groaned. When she checked the careering caravan again it had just passed the last of Colsterworth’s terraced houses. There were too many trees and bends ahead for the driver to see the farmhouse.
Louise sized up the distance to the road, and snapped the bridle. “Hang on,” she told Genevieve. The stallion charged forwards, dusky red grass blurring beneath its hooves. It jumped the first fence with hardly a break in its rhythm. Louise and Genevieve bounced down hard on its back, the younger girl letting out a yap of pain.
A jeering crowd had emerged on the road behind the caravan, milling beneath the twin clumps of geneered silver birch trees which marked the town’s official boundary. It was almost as if they were unwilling, or unable, to venture out into the open fields. Several bolts of white fire were flung after the fleeing caravan—glinting stars which dwindled away after a few hundred yards.
Louise wanted to weep in frustration when she saw people walking out of the farmhouse and start down the road towards Colsterworth. The Romany woman still hadn’t noticed the danger ahead.
“Shout at her! Stop her!” she cried to Genevieve.
They covered the last three hundred yards bellowing wildly.
It was to no avail. They were close enough to the caravan to see the foam coating the nose of the piebald cob before the Romany woman caught sight of them. Even then she didn’t stop, although the reins were pulled back. The huge beast started to slow its frantic sprint to a more reasonable trot.
The stallion cleared the hedge and the ditch running alongside the road in an easy bound. Louise whipped it around to match the caravan’s pace. There was a tremendous clattering coming from inside the wooden frame with its gaudy paintwork, as if an entire kitchen’s worth of pots and pans were being juggled by malevolent clowns.
The Romany woman had long raven hair streaming out behind her, a brown face with round cheeks. Her white linen dress was stained with sweat. Defiant, wild eyes stared at the sisters. She made some kind of sign in the air.
A spell? Louise wondered. “Stop!” she begged. “Please stop. They’re already ahead of you. They’re at that farmhouse, look. ”
The Romany woman stood up, searching the land beyond the cob’s bobbing head. They had another quarter of a mile to go until they reached the farmhouse. But Louise had lost sight of the people who had come out of it.
“How do you know?” the woman called out.
“Just stop !” Genevieve squealed. Her small fists were bunched tight.
Carmitha looked the little girl over, then came to a decision. She nodded, and began to rein back.
The caravan’s front axle snapped with a prodigious crunching sound.
Carmitha just managed to grab hold of the frame as the whole caravan pitched forwards. Sparks flew out from underneath her as the world tilted sharply. A last wrenching snap and the caravan ground to a halt. One of the front wheels trundled past her cob horse, Olivier, then rolled down into the dry ditch at the side of the road.
“Shit!” She glared at the girls on the big black stallion, their soot-stained white blouses and grubby desolate faces. It must have been them. She’d thought they were pure, but you just couldn’t tell. Not now. Her grandmother’s ramblings on the spirit world had been nothing more than campsite tales to delight and scare young children. But she did remember some of the old woman’s words. She raised her hands so and summoned up the incantation.
“What are you doing ?” the elder of the two girls yelled down at her. “We have to get out of here. Now!”
Carmitha frowned in confusion. The girls both looked terrified, as well they might if they’d seen a tenth of what she had. Maybe they were untainted. But it if wasn’t them who wrecked the caravan . . .
She heard a chuckle and whirled around. The man just appeared out of the tree standing on the other side of the road from the ditch. Literally out of it. Bark lines faded from his body to reveal the most curious green tunic. Arms of jade silk, a jacket of lime wool, big brass buttons down the front, and a ridiculous pointed felt hat sprouting a couple of white feathers.
“Going somewhere, pretty ladies?” He bowed deeply and doffed his hat.
Carmitha blinked. His tunic really was green. But it shouldn’t have been, not in this light. “Ride!” she called to the girls.
“Oh, no.” His voice sounded indignant, a host whose hospitality has proved inadequate. “Do stay.”
One of the small kittledove birds in the tree behind him took flight with an indignant squawk. Its leathery wings folded back, and it dived towards the stallion. Intense blue and purple sparks fizzed out of its tail, leaving a contrail of saffron smoke behind it. The tiny organic missile streaked past the stallion’s nose and skewered into the ground with a wet thud.
Louise and Genevieve both reached out instinctively to pat and gentle the suddenly skittish stallion. Five more kittledoves were lined up on the pine’s branches, their twittering stilled.
“In fact, I insist you stay,” the green man said, and smiled charmingly.
“Let the girls go,” Carmitha told him calmly. “They’re only children.”
His eyes lingered on Louise. “But growing up so splendidly. Don’t you agree?”
Louise stiffened.
Carmitha was about to argue, maybe even plead. But then she saw four more people marching down the road from the farmhouse and the fight went out of her. Taking to her heels would do no good. She’d seen what the white fireballs could do to flesh and bone. It was going to be bad enough without adding to the pain.
“Sorry, girls,” she said lamely.
Louise gave her a flicker of a smile. She looked at the green man. “Touch me, peasant , and my fiancé will make you eat your own balls.”
Genevieve twisted around in astonishment to study her sister. Then grinned weakly. Louise winked at her. Paper defiance, but it felt wonderful.
The green man chortled. “Dearie me, and I thought you were a fine young lady.”
“Appearances can be deceptive,” she told him icily.
“I will enjoy teaching you some respect. I will personally see to it that your possession takes a good many days.”
Louise glanced briefly in the direction of the four men from the farmhouse who were now standing beside the placid cob. “Are you quite sure you have mustered sufficient forces? I don’t want you to be too frightened of me.”
The green man’s laboured smile vanished altogether, as did his debonair manner. “Know what, bitch? I’m going to make you watch while I fuck your little sister in half.”
Louise flinched, whitening.
“I believe this has gone far enough.” It was one of the men who’d arrived from the farm. He walked towards the green man.
Louise noticed how his legs bowed outward, making his shoulders rock slightly from side to side as he walked. But he was handsome, she acknowledged, with his dark skin and wavy jet-black hair tied back in a tiny ponytail. Rugged; backed up by a muscular build. He couldn’t have been more than about twenty, or twenty-one—the same age as Joshua. His dark blue jacket was dreadfully old-fashioned, it had long tails which came to a point just behind his knees. He wore it over a yellow waistcoat, and a white silk shirt that had a tiny turned-down collar complemented with a black ruff tie. Strange apparel, but elegant, too.
“What’s your problem, boy?” the green man asked scornfully.
“Is that not apparent, sir? I find it difficult to see how even a gentleman of your tenor can bring it upon himself to threaten three frightened ladies.”
The green man’s mouth split into a wide smile. “Oh, you do, do you?” White fire speared out of his fingers. It struck the newcomer’s blue jacket and flared wide into clawing braids. He stood calmly as the coils of incandescence scrabbled ineffectively across him, as if he wore an overcoat of impervious glass.
Unperturbed by his failure, the green man swung a fist. It didn’t connect. His opponent ducked back with surprising speed. A fist slammed into the side of the green man’s torso. Three ribs shattered from the enhanced blow. He had to exert some of his own energistic strength to stave off the pain and repair the physical damage. “Fuck,” he spat, shocked by this inexplicable recalcitrance on the part of someone who was supposed to be a comrade. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I would have thought that obvious, sir,” the other said from behind raised fists. “I am defending the honour of these ladies.”
“I don’t believe this,” the green man exclaimed. “Look, let’s just get them possessed, and forget it. Okay? Sorry I mouthed off. But that girl has the devil’s own tongue.”
“No, sir, I will not forget your threat to the child. Our Lord may have deemed me unworthy to join Him in Heaven. But, still, I count myself as more than a beast who would commit rapine upon such a delicate flower.”
“Delicate . . . You have got to be fucking joking.”
“Never, sir.”
The green man threw his hands in the air. He turned to the other three who had accompanied his opponent from the farm. “Come on, together we can boil his crazy brain and send him back to the beyond. Or maybe you can ignore them pleading to be let back into the world,” he added significantly.
The three men exchanged an uneasy glance.
“You may indeed best me,” the man in the blue jacket said. “But if I have to return to that accursed nowhere, I will take at least one of you with me, possibly more. So come then, who will it be?”
“I don’t need any of this,” one of the three muttered. He pushed his way past the other two and started to walk down the road towards the town.
The man in the blue jacket gave the remaining two an inquiring look. Both of them shook their heads and set off down the road.
“What is it with you?” the green man shouted furiously.
“I believe that is a rhetorical question.”
“Okay, so who the hell are you?”
For a moment his handsome face faltered in its resolution. Pain burned in his eyes. “They called me Titreano, once,” he whispered.
“Okay, Titreano. It’s your party. For now. But when Quinn Dexter catches up with you, it’s going to be the morning after like you’ve never fucking believed.”
He turned on a heel and stalked off along the road.
Carmitha finally remembered to breathe again. “OhmyGod!” Her knees gave out, and she sat down fast. “I thought I was dead.”
Titreano smiled graciously. “You would not have been killed. What they bring is something far worse.”
“Like what ?”
“Possession.”
She gave him a long, mistrustful stare. “And you’re one of them.”
“To my shame, my lady, I am.”
Carmitha didn’t know what the hell to believe.
“Please, sir?” Genevieve asked. “What should we do now? Where can Louise and I go?”
Louise patted Gen’s hands in caution. This Titreano was one of the devils after all, no matter how friendly he appeared to be.
“I do not know this place,” Titreano said. “But I would advise against yonder town.”
“We know that,” Genevieve said spryly.
Titreano smiled up at her. “Indeed you do. And what is your name, little one?”
“Genevieve. And this is my sister, Louise. We’re Kavanaghs, you know.”
Carmitha groaned and rolled her eyes. “Christ, that’s all I need right now,” she mumbled.
Louise gave her a puzzled frown.
“I regret I have not heard of your family,” Titreano said in what sounded like sincere regret. “But from your pride, I venture it is a great one.”
“We own a lot of Kesteven between us,” Genevieve said. She was beginning to like this man. He’d stood up to the horrors, and he was polite. Not many grown-ups were polite to her, they never seemed to have the time to talk at all. He was very well spoken, too.
“Kesteven?” Titreano said. “Now that is a name I do know. I believe that it is an area of Lincolnshire. Am I correct?”
“Back on Earth, yes,” Louise said.
“Back on Earth,” Titreano repeated incredulously. He glanced over at Duke, then switched to Duchess. “Exactly what is this world?”
“Norfolk. It’s an English-ethnic planet.”
“The majority,” Carmitha said.
Louise frowned again. What ever was wrong with the Romany woman?
Titreano closed his eyes, as if he felt some deep pain. “I sailed upon oceans, and I thought no challenge could be greater,” he said faintly. “And now men sail the void between stars. Oh, how I remember them. The constellations burning so bright at night. How could I ever have known? God’s creation has a majesty which lays men bare at His feet.”
“You were a sailor?” Louise asked uncertainly.
“Yes, my lady Louise. I had the honour to serve my King thus.”
“King? There’s no royal family in the Earth’s English state any more.”
Titreano slowly opened his eyes, revealing only sadness. “No King?”
“No. But our Mountbatten family are descended from British royalty. The Prince guards our constitution.”
“So nobility has not yet been overthrown by darkness. Ah well, I should be content.”
“How come you didn’t know about old England?” Genevieve asked. “I mean, you knew about Kesteven being a part of it.”
“What year is this, little one?”
Genevieve considered protesting about being called “little one,” but he didn’t seem to mean it in a nasty way. “Year 102 since settlement. But those are Norfolk years; they’re four Earth years long. So back on Earth it’s 2611.”
“Twenty-six hundred and eleven years since Our Lord was born,” Titreano said in awe. “Dear Heaven. So long? Though the torment I endured felt as if it were eternal.”
“What torment?” Genevieve asked with innocent curiosity.
“The torment all us damned souls face after they die, little one.”
Genevieve’s jaw dropped, her mouth forming a wide O.
“You’ve been dead?” Louise asked, not believing a word of it.
“Yes, Lady Louise. I was dead, for over eight hundred years.”
“That’s what you meant by possession?” Carmitha said.
“Yes, my lady,” he said gravely.
Carmitha pinched the top of her nose, wrinkling her brow. “And how, exactly, did you come back?”
“I do not know, except a way was opened into this body’s heart.”
“You mean that’s not your body?”
“No. This is a mortal man by the name of Eamon Goodwin, though I now wear my own form above his. I hear him crying inside me.” He fixed Carmitha with a steady eye. “That is why the others pursue you. There are millions of souls lost in the torment of beyond. All seek living bodies so they may breathe again.”
“Us?” Genevieve squeaked.
“Yes, little one. You. I’m sorry.”
“Look, this is all very interesting,” Carmitha said. “Complete drivel, but interesting. However, just in case you haven’t caught hold, right now we are drowning in deep shit. I don’t know what you freaks really are, possessed zombies or something nice and simple like xenocs with psychic powers. But when that green bastard reaches Colsterworth he’s going to be coming back with a lot of friends. I’ve got to unhitch my horse, and we three”—her gesture took in the sisters—“have got to be long gone.” She arched an eyebrow. “Right, Miss Kavanagh?”
“Yes.” Louise nodded.
Titreano glanced at the passive cob, then the stallion. “If you are serious in your intent, you should travel together in your caravan. None of you has a saddle, and this mighty beast has the look of Hercules about him. I’ll wager he can maintain a steady pace for many hours.”
“Brilliant,” Carmitha snorted. She hopped down onto the hard-packed dirt of the road and slapped the side of her ruined caravan. “We’ll just wait here for a wheelwright to come along, shall we?”
Titreano smiled. He walked over to the ditch where the wheel had fallen in.
Carmitha’s next acidic phrase died unspoken as he righted the wheel and pushed it (one-handed!) up out of the ditch, treating it as though it were a child’s hoop. The wheel was five feet in diameter, and made of good, heavy tythorn wood. Three strong men would struggle to lift it between them.
“My God.” She wasn’t sure if she should be thankful or horrified at such a demonstration. If all of them were like him, then hope had deserted Norfolk long ago.
Titreano reached the caravan and bent down.
“You’re not going to . . .”
He lifted it by the front corner—two, three feet off the road. Carmitha watched as the broken axle slowly straightened itself. The splintered fracture in the middle blurred, then for a brief moment the wood appeared to run like a liquid. It solidified. And the axle was whole again.
Titreano jemmied the wheel back onto the bearing.
“What are you?” Carmitha whispered weakly.
“I have already explained, my lady,” Titreano said. “What I can never do is bring you to believe what I am. That must come of its own accord, as God wills.”
He went over to the stallion and held his arms up. “Come on, little one, down you come.”
Genevieve hesitated.
“Go on,” Louise said quietly. Plainly, if Titreano had wanted to harm them, he would have done it by now. The more she saw of these strange people, the more her heart blackened. What could possibly fight such power?
Genevieve smiled scampishly and swung a leg over the stallion. She slithered down his flank into Titreano’s grip.
“Thank you,” she said as he put her down. “And thank you for helping us, too.”
“How could I not? I may be damned, but I am not devoid of honour.”
Louise got most of the way down the stallion before she accepted his steadying hand. She managed a fast, embarrassed grin of thanks.
“I’m sore all over,” Genevieve complained, hands rubbing her bottom.
“Where to?” Louise asked Carmitha.
“I’m not sure,” the Romany replied. “There should be a lot of my folk in the caves above Holbeach. We always gather there if there’s any kind of trouble abroad. You can hold those caves for a long time; they’re high in the cliffs, not easy to reach.”
“It would be a short siege this time, I fear,” Titreano said.
“You got a better idea?” she snapped back.
“You cannot stay on this island, not if you wish to escape possession. Does this world have ships?”
“Some,” Louise said.
“Then you should try to buy passage.”
“To go where?” Carmitha asked. “If your kind really are after bodies, exactly where would be safe?”
“That would depend on how swiftly your leaders rally. There will be war, many dreadful battles. There can be nothing less. Both our kinds are fighting for their very existence.”
“Then we must go to Norwich, the capital,” Louise said decisively. “We must warn the government.”
“Norwich is five thousand miles away,” Carmitha said. “A ship would take weeks.”
“We can’t hide here and do nothing.”
“I’m not risking myself on some foolhardy errand, girl. Fat lot of good you precious landowners will be, anyway. What has Norfolk got which can fight off the likes of him?” She waved a hand towards Titreano.
“The Confederation Navy squadron is still here,” Louise said, her voice raised now. “They have fabulous weapons.”
“Of mass destruction. How’s that going to help people who have been possessed? We need to break the possession, not slaughter the afflicted.”
They glared at each other.
“There’s an aeroambulance based at Bytham,” Genevieve said brightly. “That could reach Norwich in five hours.”
Louise and Carmitha stared at her. Then Louise broke into a grin and kissed her sister. “Now who’s the clever one?”
Genevieve smiled around pertly. Titreano made a face at her, and she giggled.
Carmitha glanced down the road. “Bytham’s about a seven hour journey from here. Assuming we don’t run into any more problems.”
“We won’t,” Genevieve said. She took hold of Titreano’s hand. “Not with you with us.”
He grinned halfheartedly. “I . . .”
“You’re not going to leave us alone,” a suddenly stricken Genevieve asked.
“Of course not, little one.”
“That’s that, then.”
Carmitha shook her head. “I must be bloody mad even thinking of doing this. Louise, tether your horse to the caravan.”
Louise did as she was told. Carmitha climbed back up on the caravan, regarding it suspiciously as she put her weight on the driver’s seat. “How long is that repair going to last for?”
“I’m not quite sure,” Titreano said apologetically. He helped Genevieve up beside Carmitha, then hoisted himself up.
When Louise clambered up, the narrow seat was cramped. She was pressed against Titreano, and not quite sure how she should react to such proximity. If only it were Joshua, she thought wistfully.
Carmitha flicked the reins, and Olivier started forwards at an easy trot.
Genevieve folded her arms in satisfaction and cocked her head to look up at Titreano. “Did you help us at Cricklade as well?”
“How’s that, little one?”
“One of the possessed was trying to stop us from riding away,” Louise said. “She was hit by white fire. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“No, Lady Louise. It was not I.”
Louise settled back into the hard seat, unhappy the mystery hadn’t been solved. But then by today’s standards it was one of the lesser problems confronting her.
Olivier trotted on down the road as Duke finally disappeared below the wolds. Behind the caravan, more of Colsterworth’s buildings had started to burn.
Guyana’s navy spaceport was a standard hollow sphere of girders, almost two kilometres in diameter. Like a globular silver-white mushroom on a very thin stalk, it stuck out of the asteroid’s rotation axis; the massive magnetic bearings on the end of the connecting spindle allowed it to remain stationary while the colossal rock rolled along its orbital track. The surface was built up from circular docking bays linked together by a filigree of struts and transit tubes. Tanks, generators, crew stations, environmental maintenance machinery, and shark-fin thermo dump panels were jumbled together in the gaps between bays, apparently without reference to any overall design logic.
Narrow rivers of twinkling star-specks looped around it all, twining in elaborate, interlocked figure-eights. The rivers had a current, their points of light drifting in the same direction at the same speed; cargo tugs, personnel commuters, and MSVs, firing their reaction drives to maintain the precise vectors fed to them by traffic control. Ombey’s code three defence alert had stirred the spaceport into frantic activity for the second time in twenty-four hours. But this time instead of preparing to receive a single craft, frigates and battle cruisers were departing. Every few minutes one of the big spherical Royal Kulu Navy ships would launch from its docking bay, rising through the traffic lanes of smaller support craft with an arc-bright glare of secondary fusion drives. They were racing for higher orbits, each with a different inclination; Strategic Defence Command positioned them so they englobed the entire planet, giving full interception coverage out to a million kilometres. If any unidentified ship emerged from a ZTT jump within that region, it would be engaged within a maximum of fifteen seconds.
Amid the departing warships a lone navy flyer rose from the spaceport. It was a flattened egg-shape fuselage of dark blue-grey silicolithium composite, fifty metres long, fifteen wide. Coherent magnetic fields wrapped it in a warm golden glow of captured solar wind particles. Ion thrusters fired, manoeuvring it away from the big frigates. Then the fusion tube in the tail ignited, pushing it down towards the planet seventy-five thousand kilometres below.
The one-gee acceleration sucked Ralph Hiltch gently back into his seat, making the floor stand to the vertical. On the seat next to him, his flight bag rolled over once to lie in the crook of the cushioning.
“This vector will get us to Pasto spaceport in sixty-three minutes,” Cathal Fitzgerald datavised from the pilot’s seat.
“Thanks,” Ralph replied. He widened the channel to include the two G66 troopers. “I’d like you all to access the briefing that Skark gave me. This kind of information could be critical, and we need all the breaks we can get around here.”
That earned him a grin and a wave from Dean Folan, a noncommittal grimace from Will Danza. They were both sitting on the other side of the aisle. The sixty-seater cabin seemed deserted with just the four of them using it.
None of his little team had complained or refused to go. Privately he’d made it quite clear they could pull out without any indiscipline action being entered on their file. But they’d all agreed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Even Dean who had the best excuse of all. He’d been in surgery for seven hours last night; the asteroid’s navy clinic had to rebuild sixty per cent of his arm. The boosted musculature, ruined by the hit he’d taken in Lalonde’s jungle, had to be completely replaced with fresh artificial tissue, along with various blood vessels, skin, and nerves. The repair was still wrapped in a green sheath of medical nanonic packaging. But he was looking forward to levelling the score, he’d said cheerfully.
Ralph closed his eyes and let the briefing invade his mind, neural nanonics tabulating it into a sharply defined iconographic matrix. Details of the Xingu continent: a sprawl of four and a half million square kilometres in the northern hemisphere, roughly diamond-shaped, with a long mountainous ridge of land extending out from its southern corner. The ridge crossed the equator; and Ombey’s broad tropical zones meant the entire continent was an ideal farming region, with the one exception of the semi-desert occupying the centre. So far only two-fifths of it was inhabited, but with a population of seventy million, it was the second-most prosperous continent after Esparta, where the capital Atherstone was situated.
After Xingu came the embassy trio, Jacob Tremarco, Savion Kerwin, and Angeline Gallagher. Their career files contained nothing exceptional, they were all regular Kulu Foreign Office staffers: loyal, boring bureaucrats. Visuals, family histories, medical reports. It was all there, and none of it particularly useful apart from the images. Ralph stored them in a neural nanonics memory cell, and spliced them with a general characteristics recognition program. He hadn’t forgotten that strange image-shifting ability the sequestrated had demonstrated back on Lalonde. The recognition program might give him a slight edge if one of them attempted a disguise, though he didn’t hold out much hope.
The most promising part of the datapackage was the series of measures Admiral Farquar and Leonard DeVille, Xingu’s Home Office minister, had implemented to quarantine the continent and trace the embassy trio. All civil traffic was being systematically shut down. Search programs were being loaded into the continent’s data cores, watching for a trail of unexplained temporary glitches in processors and power circuits. Public-area security monitor cameras had been given the visual pattern of the trio, and police patrols were also being briefed.
Maybe they’d get lucky, Ralph thought. Lalonde was a backwards colony on the arse edge of nowhere, without any modern communications or much in the way of civil authority. But Ombey was part of the Kingdom, the society he’d sworn to defend with his life if need be. Years ago at university, when he’d discreetly been offered a commission in the agency, he’d considered Kulu a worthwhile society. The richest in the Confederation outside Edenism, it was strong economically, militarily; a technology leader. It had a judicial system which kept the average citizen safe on the streets, and was even reasonably fair by modern standards. Medical care was socialized. Most people had jobs. Admittedly, ruled by the Saldanas, it was hardly the most democratic of systems, but then short of the Edenist Consensus few democratic societies were truly representative. And there were a lot of planets which didn’t even pretend to be egalitarian. So he’d swallowed any niggling self-suspicion of radicalism, and agreed to serve his King until his death.
What he’d seen of the galaxy had only served to strengthen his conviction that he’d done the right thing in taking the oath. The Kingdom was a civilized place compared to most; its citizens were entitled to lead their lives without interference. And if that meant the ESA occasionally having to get its hands dirty, then so be it, as far as Ralph was concerned. A society worth having is worth protecting.
And thanks to its own nature, Ombey should definitely be able to cope better than Lalonde. Although the very systems which made it more able also gave the enemy a greater opportunity to spread its subversion. The virus carriers had been slow to travel on Lalonde. Here they would suffer no such restrictions.
Cathal Fitzgerald cut the flyer’s fusion drive when they were two hundred kilometres above Xingu. Gravity took over, pulling the flyer down. Its magnetic field expanded, applying subtle pressures to the tenuous gases pushing against the fuselage. Buoyant at the centre of a sparkling cushion of ions, the flyer banked to starboard and began a gentle glide-spiral down towards the spaceport below.
They were a hundred and fifty kilometres high when the flight computer datavised a priority secure signal from Roche Skark into Ralph’s neural nanonics.
“We might have a problem developing,” the ESA director told him. “A civil passenger flight from Pasto to Atherstone is having trouble with its electronic systems, nothing critical but the glitches are constant. I’d like to bring you in on the Privy Council security committee to advise.”
“Yes, sir,” Ralph acknowledged. The datavise broadened to a security level one sensenviron conference. Ralph appeared to be sitting at an oval table in a plain white bubble room with walls at an indeterminate distance.
Admiral Farquar was sitting at the head of the table, with Roche Skark and the ISA director Jannike Dermot flanking him. Ralph’s neural nanonics identified the other three people present. Next to the ISA director was Commander Deborah Unwin, head of Ombey’s Strategic Defence network; Ryle Thorne, Ombey’s national Home Office minister, was placed next to her. Ralph found himself with Roche Skark on one side, and Leonard DeVille on the other.
“The plane is seven minutes from Atherstone,” Deborah Unwin said. “We have to make a decision.”
“What is the plane’s current status?” Ralph asked.
“The pilot was instructed to turn back to Pasto by my flight controllers as part of the quarantine procedures. And that’s when he reported his difficulties. He says he’ll be endangering the passengers if he has to fly all the way back to Pasto. And if it’s a genuine malfunction he will be.”
“We can hardly go around using our SD platforms on civil aircraft just because they have a dodgy processor,” Ryle Thorne said.
“On the contrary, sir,” Ralph said. “In this situation we have to maintain a policy of guilty until proven innocent. You cannot allow that plane to land in the capital, not under any circumstances. Not now.”
“If he has to fly back to Xingu he may well kill everyone on board,” the minister protested. “The plane could be downed in the ocean.”
“Atherstone has a high proportion of military bases in the surrounding district,” Admiral Farquar said. “If necessary the plane can simply sit on a landing pad surrounded by marines until we work out a satisfactory method of detecting if the virus is present.”
“Is the pilot using his neural nanonics to communicate with flight control?” Ralph asked.
“Yes,” Deborah said.
“Okay, then it’s a reasonable assumption that he’s not been sequestrated. If you can guarantee a landing pad can be guarded securely, I say use it. But the plane must remain sealed until we find out what’s happened to the embassy trio.”
“Good enough,” Admiral Farquar said.
“I’ll put the marines at Sapcoat base on active status as of now,” Deborah said. “That’s over a hundred kilometres from Atherstone. The plane can reach it easily enough.”
“A hundred kilometres is a safe enough distance,” Ryle Thorne said smoothly.
Ralph didn’t like the minister’s attitude; he seemed to be treating this as if it were a minor natural incident, like a hurricane or earthquake. But then the minister had to go back to his constituents every five years and convince them he was acting in their best interests. Ordering SD platforms to fire on their fellow citizens might be hard to explain away in public relations terms. That was one of the reasons the royal Saldanas had a parliament to advise them. An insulating layer around the blame. Elected politicians were always culpable and replaceable.
“I’d also suggest that once the plane’s landed you use an orbital sensor satellite to mount a permanent observation on it,” Ralph said. “Just in case there’s any attempt to break out. That way we can use the SD platforms as a last resort; sterilize the entire area.”
“That strikes me as somewhat excessive,” Ryle Thorne said with elaborate politeness.
“Again, no, sir. On Lalonde the enemy were able to use their electronic warfare capability to interfere with the LDC’s observation satellite from the ground; they fuzzed the images to quite a degree. I’d say this fallback option is the least we should be doing.”
“Ralph was brought in because of his experience in combating the virus,” Roche Skark said, smiling at the minister. “He got off Lalonde precisely because he instigated these kinds of protective measures.”
Ryle Thorne gave a short nod.
“Pity he didn’t protect us from the virus,” Jannike muttered. Except in a sensenviron context nothing was really sotto voce; all utterances were deliberate.
Ralph glanced over at her, but the computer-synthesised image of her face gave nothing away.
Chapman Adkinson was getting mighty tired of the continual stream of datavises he was receiving from flight control. Worried, too. He wasn’t dealing with civil flight control at Atherstone anymore; they’d gone off-line eight minutes ago. Military protocols were being enforced now, the whole planet’s traffic control being routed through the Royal Navy operations centre on Guyana. And they were none too sympathetic to his condition.
Esparta was rolling by below the plane, one of the lush national parks which surrounded the capital. A jungle scarred only by the occasional Roman-straight motorway and dachas belonging to the aristocracy. The ocean was five minutes behind them.
His neural nanonics were accessing the external sensors, but the visual image was only being analysed in secondary mode, mainly to back up the inertial guidance system which he no longer wholly trusted. He was concentrating on schematics of the plane’s systems. Twenty per cent of the onboard processors were suffering from random dropouts. Some had come back on-line after a few seconds, others remained dead. The diagnostic programs he ran simply couldn’t pinpoint the problem. And, even more disturbing, in the last fifteen minutes he’d been experiencing spikes and reductions in the power circuits.
That was what had made him argue with the military controllers. Processor glitches were an acceptable menace; there was so much redundancy built into the plane’s electronic architecture it could survive an almost total shutdown; but power loss was in a different hazard category altogether. Chapman Adkinson had already decided that if they did try to force him to fly back over the ocean he was going to ditch there and then, and to hell with the penalties they’d load into his licence. The biohazard in Xingu couldn’t be that lethal, surely?
“Chapman, stand by for some updated landing coordinates,” Guyana’s flight controller datavised. “We’re diverting you.”
“Where to?” Chapman asked sceptically.
“Sapcoat base. They’re prepping a clean reception area for you. Looks like the passengers are going to have to stay on board for a while once you’re down.”
“As long as we get down.”
The coordinates came through, and Chapman fed them directly into the flight computer. Twelve minutes to Sapcoat. He could accept that. The plane banked gently to port, and began to curve away from the city which lay somewhere beyond the horizon’s black and silver heat shimmer.
It was a signal for the glitches to quadruple. Circuits began to drop out at a frightening rate. A quarter of the system’s schematics flicked to a daunting black, leaving only ghostly colourless outlines where functional hardware had been a moment before. Power to the two rear starboard compressors failed completely. He could hear the high-pitched background whine deepening as the blades slowed. The flight computer’s compensation program went primary, but too many control surfaces had shut down for it to be truly effective.
“Mayday, mayday,” Chapman datavised. Even his primary transmitter had failed. Backup processors were activated. The fuselage began to vibrate and judder, as if the plane were ploughing through a patch of choppy air.
His neural nanonics reported a stream of datavises from the passenger cabin, querying the shaking and sudden loss of in-flight entertainment processors. He called up a procedural file and shunted it into what was left of the plane’s entertainment circuits. Seatback holoscreens should be playing a placebo message about clear air turbulence and the precautions their pilot was now instigating.
“What is it?” flight control asked.
“Losing power and height. Systems failure rate increasing. Shit! I just lost the tail rudder databus.” He datavised an emergency code into the flight computer. A silvery piston slid out of the horseshoe console in front of him, a dull chrome-red pistol grip on the end. It reached his lap and rotated silently through ninety degrees. Chapman grabbed it. Manual control. Christ, I’ve never used one outside of Aviation Authority simulations!
The datavise bandwidth to the flight computer started to shrink. He prioritized the schematic to display absolute essentials. Holographic displays on the console came alive, duplicating the information.
“Find me a flat patch of land, now, damn it!” How he was going to bring the plane down in VTOL configuration with both the starboard compressors out wasn’t something he wanted to think about. Maybe a motorway, and use it like a runway?
“Request denied.”
“What?”
“You may not land anywhere but the authorized coordinate.”
“Fuck you! We’re going to crash.”
“Sorry, Chapman, you cannot land anywhere outside Sapcoat.”
“I can’t reach Sapcoat.” His datavised control linkage to the flight computer began to fail. The pistol grip shifted slightly in his hand, and he felt the plane tilt in tandem.
Careful! he told himself. A firm pressure on the grip, and the nose began to edge back. The holographic horizon graphic showed he was still in a shallow dive. More pressure, and the descent rate slowed.
The door into the cockpit slid open. Chapman Adkinson was wired too tight to care. It was supposed to be codelocked, but the way hardware was crashing . . .
“Why have you altered course?”
Chapman shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The guy was dressed in a cheap suit, five years out-of-date. He wasn’t just calm, he was serene. Incredible! He must feel the plane’s buffeting.
“Technical problem,” Chapman managed to gasp. “We’re putting down at the nearest landing pad that can handle an emergency.” The pistol grip was fighting his every movement. And now the holographic displays were wobbling. He wasn’t sure if he could trust them anymore. “Get back into your seat now, fella.”
The man simply walked up behind the pilot’s chair and slid his head over Chapman’s shoulder, peering out of the narrow curving windscreen. “Where is Atherstone?”
“Look, pal—” Pain lanced deep into his thigh. Chapman grunted roughly at the shock of it. The man’s left index finger was resting lightly on his leg, a small circle of his uniform’s trouser fabric was burning around it.
Chapman swatted at the small blue flames, eyes blinking away sudden tears. His thigh muscle was smarting abominably.
“Where is Atherstone?” the man repeated. “I have to go there.”
Chapman found his calmness more unnerving than the plane’s failure. “Listen, I wasn’t joking when I said we had technical problems. We’re going to be lucky if we make it over this sodding jungle. Forget about Atherstone.”
“I will hurt you again, harder this time. And I will keep on hurting you until you take me to Atherstone.”
“Oh, no,” Louise gasped. “Not here, too.” As she watched, one of the long river barges drifted past the last warehouse. Its decks were alight, the tarpaulin-covered cargo hold puffing out mushrooms of brown smoke. Louise guessed the barrels it carried were exploding. People were jumping off the prow, striking out for the bank.
“Now what?” Genevieve asked in a woeful voice.
“Let me think.” She had never considered that anywhere other than Cricklade was affected. But of course her father and that chilling young priest had stopped at Colsterworth first. And before that . . . A midwinter frost prickled her spine. Could it all have started at Boston? Everyone said an insurrection was beyond the Union’s ability to mount. Was the whole island to be conquered by these demons in human guise?
And if so, where do we go?
“Look!” Genevieve was pointing ahead.
Louise saw a Romany caravan being driven at considerable speed along one of the roads on the edge of town below them. The driver was standing on the seat, striking at the cob horse’s rump with a whip. It was a woman, her white dress flapping excitably in the wind.
“She’s running away,” Genevieve cried. “They can’t have got to her yet.”
The notion that they could join up with an adult who would be on their side was a glorious tonic for Louise. Even if it was just a simple Romany woman, she thought uncharitably. But then didn’t Romanies know about magic? The manor staff said they practised all sorts of dark arts. She might even know how to ward off the devils.
Louise took in the road ahead of the racing caravan with a keen sweep, trying to work out where they could meet it. There was nothing directly in front of the caravan, but three quarters of a mile from the town was a large farmhouse.
Frantic animals were charging out of the open farmyard gate into the meadows: pigs, heifers, a trio of shire-horses, even a Labrador. The house’s windows flashed brightly, emitting solid beams of blue-white light which appeared quite dazzling under the scarlet sky.
“She’s heading straight for them,” Louise groaned. When she checked the careering caravan again it had just passed the last of Colsterworth’s terraced houses. There were too many trees and bends ahead for the driver to see the farmhouse.
Louise sized up the distance to the road, and snapped the bridle. “Hang on,” she told Genevieve. The stallion charged forwards, dusky red grass blurring beneath its hooves. It jumped the first fence with hardly a break in its rhythm. Louise and Genevieve bounced down hard on its back, the younger girl letting out a yap of pain.
A jeering crowd had emerged on the road behind the caravan, milling beneath the twin clumps of geneered silver birch trees which marked the town’s official boundary. It was almost as if they were unwilling, or unable, to venture out into the open fields. Several bolts of white fire were flung after the fleeing caravan—glinting stars which dwindled away after a few hundred yards.
Louise wanted to weep in frustration when she saw people walking out of the farmhouse and start down the road towards Colsterworth. The Romany woman still hadn’t noticed the danger ahead.
“Shout at her! Stop her!” she cried to Genevieve.
They covered the last three hundred yards bellowing wildly.
It was to no avail. They were close enough to the caravan to see the foam coating the nose of the piebald cob before the Romany woman caught sight of them. Even then she didn’t stop, although the reins were pulled back. The huge beast started to slow its frantic sprint to a more reasonable trot.
The stallion cleared the hedge and the ditch running alongside the road in an easy bound. Louise whipped it around to match the caravan’s pace. There was a tremendous clattering coming from inside the wooden frame with its gaudy paintwork, as if an entire kitchen’s worth of pots and pans were being juggled by malevolent clowns.
The Romany woman had long raven hair streaming out behind her, a brown face with round cheeks. Her white linen dress was stained with sweat. Defiant, wild eyes stared at the sisters. She made some kind of sign in the air.
A spell? Louise wondered. “Stop!” she begged. “Please stop. They’re already ahead of you. They’re at that farmhouse, look. ”
The Romany woman stood up, searching the land beyond the cob’s bobbing head. They had another quarter of a mile to go until they reached the farmhouse. But Louise had lost sight of the people who had come out of it.
“How do you know?” the woman called out.
“Just stop !” Genevieve squealed. Her small fists were bunched tight.
Carmitha looked the little girl over, then came to a decision. She nodded, and began to rein back.
The caravan’s front axle snapped with a prodigious crunching sound.
Carmitha just managed to grab hold of the frame as the whole caravan pitched forwards. Sparks flew out from underneath her as the world tilted sharply. A last wrenching snap and the caravan ground to a halt. One of the front wheels trundled past her cob horse, Olivier, then rolled down into the dry ditch at the side of the road.
“Shit!” She glared at the girls on the big black stallion, their soot-stained white blouses and grubby desolate faces. It must have been them. She’d thought they were pure, but you just couldn’t tell. Not now. Her grandmother’s ramblings on the spirit world had been nothing more than campsite tales to delight and scare young children. But she did remember some of the old woman’s words. She raised her hands so and summoned up the incantation.
“What are you doing ?” the elder of the two girls yelled down at her. “We have to get out of here. Now!”
Carmitha frowned in confusion. The girls both looked terrified, as well they might if they’d seen a tenth of what she had. Maybe they were untainted. But it if wasn’t them who wrecked the caravan . . .
She heard a chuckle and whirled around. The man just appeared out of the tree standing on the other side of the road from the ditch. Literally out of it. Bark lines faded from his body to reveal the most curious green tunic. Arms of jade silk, a jacket of lime wool, big brass buttons down the front, and a ridiculous pointed felt hat sprouting a couple of white feathers.
“Going somewhere, pretty ladies?” He bowed deeply and doffed his hat.
Carmitha blinked. His tunic really was green. But it shouldn’t have been, not in this light. “Ride!” she called to the girls.
“Oh, no.” His voice sounded indignant, a host whose hospitality has proved inadequate. “Do stay.”
One of the small kittledove birds in the tree behind him took flight with an indignant squawk. Its leathery wings folded back, and it dived towards the stallion. Intense blue and purple sparks fizzed out of its tail, leaving a contrail of saffron smoke behind it. The tiny organic missile streaked past the stallion’s nose and skewered into the ground with a wet thud.
Louise and Genevieve both reached out instinctively to pat and gentle the suddenly skittish stallion. Five more kittledoves were lined up on the pine’s branches, their twittering stilled.
“In fact, I insist you stay,” the green man said, and smiled charmingly.
“Let the girls go,” Carmitha told him calmly. “They’re only children.”
His eyes lingered on Louise. “But growing up so splendidly. Don’t you agree?”
Louise stiffened.
Carmitha was about to argue, maybe even plead. But then she saw four more people marching down the road from the farmhouse and the fight went out of her. Taking to her heels would do no good. She’d seen what the white fireballs could do to flesh and bone. It was going to be bad enough without adding to the pain.
“Sorry, girls,” she said lamely.
Louise gave her a flicker of a smile. She looked at the green man. “Touch me, peasant , and my fiancé will make you eat your own balls.”
Genevieve twisted around in astonishment to study her sister. Then grinned weakly. Louise winked at her. Paper defiance, but it felt wonderful.
The green man chortled. “Dearie me, and I thought you were a fine young lady.”
“Appearances can be deceptive,” she told him icily.
“I will enjoy teaching you some respect. I will personally see to it that your possession takes a good many days.”
Louise glanced briefly in the direction of the four men from the farmhouse who were now standing beside the placid cob. “Are you quite sure you have mustered sufficient forces? I don’t want you to be too frightened of me.”
The green man’s laboured smile vanished altogether, as did his debonair manner. “Know what, bitch? I’m going to make you watch while I fuck your little sister in half.”
Louise flinched, whitening.
“I believe this has gone far enough.” It was one of the men who’d arrived from the farm. He walked towards the green man.
Louise noticed how his legs bowed outward, making his shoulders rock slightly from side to side as he walked. But he was handsome, she acknowledged, with his dark skin and wavy jet-black hair tied back in a tiny ponytail. Rugged; backed up by a muscular build. He couldn’t have been more than about twenty, or twenty-one—the same age as Joshua. His dark blue jacket was dreadfully old-fashioned, it had long tails which came to a point just behind his knees. He wore it over a yellow waistcoat, and a white silk shirt that had a tiny turned-down collar complemented with a black ruff tie. Strange apparel, but elegant, too.
“What’s your problem, boy?” the green man asked scornfully.
“Is that not apparent, sir? I find it difficult to see how even a gentleman of your tenor can bring it upon himself to threaten three frightened ladies.”
The green man’s mouth split into a wide smile. “Oh, you do, do you?” White fire speared out of his fingers. It struck the newcomer’s blue jacket and flared wide into clawing braids. He stood calmly as the coils of incandescence scrabbled ineffectively across him, as if he wore an overcoat of impervious glass.
Unperturbed by his failure, the green man swung a fist. It didn’t connect. His opponent ducked back with surprising speed. A fist slammed into the side of the green man’s torso. Three ribs shattered from the enhanced blow. He had to exert some of his own energistic strength to stave off the pain and repair the physical damage. “Fuck,” he spat, shocked by this inexplicable recalcitrance on the part of someone who was supposed to be a comrade. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I would have thought that obvious, sir,” the other said from behind raised fists. “I am defending the honour of these ladies.”
“I don’t believe this,” the green man exclaimed. “Look, let’s just get them possessed, and forget it. Okay? Sorry I mouthed off. But that girl has the devil’s own tongue.”
“No, sir, I will not forget your threat to the child. Our Lord may have deemed me unworthy to join Him in Heaven. But, still, I count myself as more than a beast who would commit rapine upon such a delicate flower.”
“Delicate . . . You have got to be fucking joking.”
“Never, sir.”
The green man threw his hands in the air. He turned to the other three who had accompanied his opponent from the farm. “Come on, together we can boil his crazy brain and send him back to the beyond. Or maybe you can ignore them pleading to be let back into the world,” he added significantly.
The three men exchanged an uneasy glance.
“You may indeed best me,” the man in the blue jacket said. “But if I have to return to that accursed nowhere, I will take at least one of you with me, possibly more. So come then, who will it be?”
“I don’t need any of this,” one of the three muttered. He pushed his way past the other two and started to walk down the road towards the town.
The man in the blue jacket gave the remaining two an inquiring look. Both of them shook their heads and set off down the road.
“What is it with you?” the green man shouted furiously.
“I believe that is a rhetorical question.”
“Okay, so who the hell are you?”
For a moment his handsome face faltered in its resolution. Pain burned in his eyes. “They called me Titreano, once,” he whispered.
“Okay, Titreano. It’s your party. For now. But when Quinn Dexter catches up with you, it’s going to be the morning after like you’ve never fucking believed.”
He turned on a heel and stalked off along the road.
Carmitha finally remembered to breathe again. “OhmyGod!” Her knees gave out, and she sat down fast. “I thought I was dead.”
Titreano smiled graciously. “You would not have been killed. What they bring is something far worse.”
“Like what ?”
“Possession.”
She gave him a long, mistrustful stare. “And you’re one of them.”
“To my shame, my lady, I am.”
Carmitha didn’t know what the hell to believe.
“Please, sir?” Genevieve asked. “What should we do now? Where can Louise and I go?”
Louise patted Gen’s hands in caution. This Titreano was one of the devils after all, no matter how friendly he appeared to be.
“I do not know this place,” Titreano said. “But I would advise against yonder town.”
“We know that,” Genevieve said spryly.
Titreano smiled up at her. “Indeed you do. And what is your name, little one?”
“Genevieve. And this is my sister, Louise. We’re Kavanaghs, you know.”
Carmitha groaned and rolled her eyes. “Christ, that’s all I need right now,” she mumbled.
Louise gave her a puzzled frown.
“I regret I have not heard of your family,” Titreano said in what sounded like sincere regret. “But from your pride, I venture it is a great one.”
“We own a lot of Kesteven between us,” Genevieve said. She was beginning to like this man. He’d stood up to the horrors, and he was polite. Not many grown-ups were polite to her, they never seemed to have the time to talk at all. He was very well spoken, too.
“Kesteven?” Titreano said. “Now that is a name I do know. I believe that it is an area of Lincolnshire. Am I correct?”
“Back on Earth, yes,” Louise said.
“Back on Earth,” Titreano repeated incredulously. He glanced over at Duke, then switched to Duchess. “Exactly what is this world?”
“Norfolk. It’s an English-ethnic planet.”
“The majority,” Carmitha said.
Louise frowned again. What ever was wrong with the Romany woman?
Titreano closed his eyes, as if he felt some deep pain. “I sailed upon oceans, and I thought no challenge could be greater,” he said faintly. “And now men sail the void between stars. Oh, how I remember them. The constellations burning so bright at night. How could I ever have known? God’s creation has a majesty which lays men bare at His feet.”
“You were a sailor?” Louise asked uncertainly.
“Yes, my lady Louise. I had the honour to serve my King thus.”
“King? There’s no royal family in the Earth’s English state any more.”
Titreano slowly opened his eyes, revealing only sadness. “No King?”
“No. But our Mountbatten family are descended from British royalty. The Prince guards our constitution.”
“So nobility has not yet been overthrown by darkness. Ah well, I should be content.”
“How come you didn’t know about old England?” Genevieve asked. “I mean, you knew about Kesteven being a part of it.”
“What year is this, little one?”
Genevieve considered protesting about being called “little one,” but he didn’t seem to mean it in a nasty way. “Year 102 since settlement. But those are Norfolk years; they’re four Earth years long. So back on Earth it’s 2611.”
“Twenty-six hundred and eleven years since Our Lord was born,” Titreano said in awe. “Dear Heaven. So long? Though the torment I endured felt as if it were eternal.”
“What torment?” Genevieve asked with innocent curiosity.
“The torment all us damned souls face after they die, little one.”
Genevieve’s jaw dropped, her mouth forming a wide O.
“You’ve been dead?” Louise asked, not believing a word of it.
“Yes, Lady Louise. I was dead, for over eight hundred years.”
“That’s what you meant by possession?” Carmitha said.
“Yes, my lady,” he said gravely.
Carmitha pinched the top of her nose, wrinkling her brow. “And how, exactly, did you come back?”
“I do not know, except a way was opened into this body’s heart.”
“You mean that’s not your body?”
“No. This is a mortal man by the name of Eamon Goodwin, though I now wear my own form above his. I hear him crying inside me.” He fixed Carmitha with a steady eye. “That is why the others pursue you. There are millions of souls lost in the torment of beyond. All seek living bodies so they may breathe again.”
“Us?” Genevieve squeaked.
“Yes, little one. You. I’m sorry.”
“Look, this is all very interesting,” Carmitha said. “Complete drivel, but interesting. However, just in case you haven’t caught hold, right now we are drowning in deep shit. I don’t know what you freaks really are, possessed zombies or something nice and simple like xenocs with psychic powers. But when that green bastard reaches Colsterworth he’s going to be coming back with a lot of friends. I’ve got to unhitch my horse, and we three”—her gesture took in the sisters—“have got to be long gone.” She arched an eyebrow. “Right, Miss Kavanagh?”
“Yes.” Louise nodded.
Titreano glanced at the passive cob, then the stallion. “If you are serious in your intent, you should travel together in your caravan. None of you has a saddle, and this mighty beast has the look of Hercules about him. I’ll wager he can maintain a steady pace for many hours.”
“Brilliant,” Carmitha snorted. She hopped down onto the hard-packed dirt of the road and slapped the side of her ruined caravan. “We’ll just wait here for a wheelwright to come along, shall we?”
Titreano smiled. He walked over to the ditch where the wheel had fallen in.
Carmitha’s next acidic phrase died unspoken as he righted the wheel and pushed it (one-handed!) up out of the ditch, treating it as though it were a child’s hoop. The wheel was five feet in diameter, and made of good, heavy tythorn wood. Three strong men would struggle to lift it between them.
“My God.” She wasn’t sure if she should be thankful or horrified at such a demonstration. If all of them were like him, then hope had deserted Norfolk long ago.
Titreano reached the caravan and bent down.
“You’re not going to . . .”
He lifted it by the front corner—two, three feet off the road. Carmitha watched as the broken axle slowly straightened itself. The splintered fracture in the middle blurred, then for a brief moment the wood appeared to run like a liquid. It solidified. And the axle was whole again.
Titreano jemmied the wheel back onto the bearing.
“What are you?” Carmitha whispered weakly.
“I have already explained, my lady,” Titreano said. “What I can never do is bring you to believe what I am. That must come of its own accord, as God wills.”
He went over to the stallion and held his arms up. “Come on, little one, down you come.”
Genevieve hesitated.
“Go on,” Louise said quietly. Plainly, if Titreano had wanted to harm them, he would have done it by now. The more she saw of these strange people, the more her heart blackened. What could possibly fight such power?
Genevieve smiled scampishly and swung a leg over the stallion. She slithered down his flank into Titreano’s grip.
“Thank you,” she said as he put her down. “And thank you for helping us, too.”
“How could I not? I may be damned, but I am not devoid of honour.”
Louise got most of the way down the stallion before she accepted his steadying hand. She managed a fast, embarrassed grin of thanks.
“I’m sore all over,” Genevieve complained, hands rubbing her bottom.
“Where to?” Louise asked Carmitha.
“I’m not sure,” the Romany replied. “There should be a lot of my folk in the caves above Holbeach. We always gather there if there’s any kind of trouble abroad. You can hold those caves for a long time; they’re high in the cliffs, not easy to reach.”
“It would be a short siege this time, I fear,” Titreano said.
“You got a better idea?” she snapped back.
“You cannot stay on this island, not if you wish to escape possession. Does this world have ships?”
“Some,” Louise said.
“Then you should try to buy passage.”
“To go where?” Carmitha asked. “If your kind really are after bodies, exactly where would be safe?”
“That would depend on how swiftly your leaders rally. There will be war, many dreadful battles. There can be nothing less. Both our kinds are fighting for their very existence.”
“Then we must go to Norwich, the capital,” Louise said decisively. “We must warn the government.”
“Norwich is five thousand miles away,” Carmitha said. “A ship would take weeks.”
“We can’t hide here and do nothing.”
“I’m not risking myself on some foolhardy errand, girl. Fat lot of good you precious landowners will be, anyway. What has Norfolk got which can fight off the likes of him?” She waved a hand towards Titreano.
“The Confederation Navy squadron is still here,” Louise said, her voice raised now. “They have fabulous weapons.”
“Of mass destruction. How’s that going to help people who have been possessed? We need to break the possession, not slaughter the afflicted.”
They glared at each other.
“There’s an aeroambulance based at Bytham,” Genevieve said brightly. “That could reach Norwich in five hours.”
Louise and Carmitha stared at her. Then Louise broke into a grin and kissed her sister. “Now who’s the clever one?”
Genevieve smiled around pertly. Titreano made a face at her, and she giggled.
Carmitha glanced down the road. “Bytham’s about a seven hour journey from here. Assuming we don’t run into any more problems.”
“We won’t,” Genevieve said. She took hold of Titreano’s hand. “Not with you with us.”
He grinned halfheartedly. “I . . .”
“You’re not going to leave us alone,” a suddenly stricken Genevieve asked.
“Of course not, little one.”
“That’s that, then.”
Carmitha shook her head. “I must be bloody mad even thinking of doing this. Louise, tether your horse to the caravan.”
Louise did as she was told. Carmitha climbed back up on the caravan, regarding it suspiciously as she put her weight on the driver’s seat. “How long is that repair going to last for?”
“I’m not quite sure,” Titreano said apologetically. He helped Genevieve up beside Carmitha, then hoisted himself up.
When Louise clambered up, the narrow seat was cramped. She was pressed against Titreano, and not quite sure how she should react to such proximity. If only it were Joshua, she thought wistfully.
Carmitha flicked the reins, and Olivier started forwards at an easy trot.
Genevieve folded her arms in satisfaction and cocked her head to look up at Titreano. “Did you help us at Cricklade as well?”
“How’s that, little one?”
“One of the possessed was trying to stop us from riding away,” Louise said. “She was hit by white fire. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“No, Lady Louise. It was not I.”
Louise settled back into the hard seat, unhappy the mystery hadn’t been solved. But then by today’s standards it was one of the lesser problems confronting her.
Olivier trotted on down the road as Duke finally disappeared below the wolds. Behind the caravan, more of Colsterworth’s buildings had started to burn.
Guyana’s navy spaceport was a standard hollow sphere of girders, almost two kilometres in diameter. Like a globular silver-white mushroom on a very thin stalk, it stuck out of the asteroid’s rotation axis; the massive magnetic bearings on the end of the connecting spindle allowed it to remain stationary while the colossal rock rolled along its orbital track. The surface was built up from circular docking bays linked together by a filigree of struts and transit tubes. Tanks, generators, crew stations, environmental maintenance machinery, and shark-fin thermo dump panels were jumbled together in the gaps between bays, apparently without reference to any overall design logic.
Narrow rivers of twinkling star-specks looped around it all, twining in elaborate, interlocked figure-eights. The rivers had a current, their points of light drifting in the same direction at the same speed; cargo tugs, personnel commuters, and MSVs, firing their reaction drives to maintain the precise vectors fed to them by traffic control. Ombey’s code three defence alert had stirred the spaceport into frantic activity for the second time in twenty-four hours. But this time instead of preparing to receive a single craft, frigates and battle cruisers were departing. Every few minutes one of the big spherical Royal Kulu Navy ships would launch from its docking bay, rising through the traffic lanes of smaller support craft with an arc-bright glare of secondary fusion drives. They were racing for higher orbits, each with a different inclination; Strategic Defence Command positioned them so they englobed the entire planet, giving full interception coverage out to a million kilometres. If any unidentified ship emerged from a ZTT jump within that region, it would be engaged within a maximum of fifteen seconds.
Amid the departing warships a lone navy flyer rose from the spaceport. It was a flattened egg-shape fuselage of dark blue-grey silicolithium composite, fifty metres long, fifteen wide. Coherent magnetic fields wrapped it in a warm golden glow of captured solar wind particles. Ion thrusters fired, manoeuvring it away from the big frigates. Then the fusion tube in the tail ignited, pushing it down towards the planet seventy-five thousand kilometres below.
The one-gee acceleration sucked Ralph Hiltch gently back into his seat, making the floor stand to the vertical. On the seat next to him, his flight bag rolled over once to lie in the crook of the cushioning.
“This vector will get us to Pasto spaceport in sixty-three minutes,” Cathal Fitzgerald datavised from the pilot’s seat.
“Thanks,” Ralph replied. He widened the channel to include the two G66 troopers. “I’d like you all to access the briefing that Skark gave me. This kind of information could be critical, and we need all the breaks we can get around here.”
That earned him a grin and a wave from Dean Folan, a noncommittal grimace from Will Danza. They were both sitting on the other side of the aisle. The sixty-seater cabin seemed deserted with just the four of them using it.
None of his little team had complained or refused to go. Privately he’d made it quite clear they could pull out without any indiscipline action being entered on their file. But they’d all agreed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Even Dean who had the best excuse of all. He’d been in surgery for seven hours last night; the asteroid’s navy clinic had to rebuild sixty per cent of his arm. The boosted musculature, ruined by the hit he’d taken in Lalonde’s jungle, had to be completely replaced with fresh artificial tissue, along with various blood vessels, skin, and nerves. The repair was still wrapped in a green sheath of medical nanonic packaging. But he was looking forward to levelling the score, he’d said cheerfully.
Ralph closed his eyes and let the briefing invade his mind, neural nanonics tabulating it into a sharply defined iconographic matrix. Details of the Xingu continent: a sprawl of four and a half million square kilometres in the northern hemisphere, roughly diamond-shaped, with a long mountainous ridge of land extending out from its southern corner. The ridge crossed the equator; and Ombey’s broad tropical zones meant the entire continent was an ideal farming region, with the one exception of the semi-desert occupying the centre. So far only two-fifths of it was inhabited, but with a population of seventy million, it was the second-most prosperous continent after Esparta, where the capital Atherstone was situated.
After Xingu came the embassy trio, Jacob Tremarco, Savion Kerwin, and Angeline Gallagher. Their career files contained nothing exceptional, they were all regular Kulu Foreign Office staffers: loyal, boring bureaucrats. Visuals, family histories, medical reports. It was all there, and none of it particularly useful apart from the images. Ralph stored them in a neural nanonics memory cell, and spliced them with a general characteristics recognition program. He hadn’t forgotten that strange image-shifting ability the sequestrated had demonstrated back on Lalonde. The recognition program might give him a slight edge if one of them attempted a disguise, though he didn’t hold out much hope.
The most promising part of the datapackage was the series of measures Admiral Farquar and Leonard DeVille, Xingu’s Home Office minister, had implemented to quarantine the continent and trace the embassy trio. All civil traffic was being systematically shut down. Search programs were being loaded into the continent’s data cores, watching for a trail of unexplained temporary glitches in processors and power circuits. Public-area security monitor cameras had been given the visual pattern of the trio, and police patrols were also being briefed.
Maybe they’d get lucky, Ralph thought. Lalonde was a backwards colony on the arse edge of nowhere, without any modern communications or much in the way of civil authority. But Ombey was part of the Kingdom, the society he’d sworn to defend with his life if need be. Years ago at university, when he’d discreetly been offered a commission in the agency, he’d considered Kulu a worthwhile society. The richest in the Confederation outside Edenism, it was strong economically, militarily; a technology leader. It had a judicial system which kept the average citizen safe on the streets, and was even reasonably fair by modern standards. Medical care was socialized. Most people had jobs. Admittedly, ruled by the Saldanas, it was hardly the most democratic of systems, but then short of the Edenist Consensus few democratic societies were truly representative. And there were a lot of planets which didn’t even pretend to be egalitarian. So he’d swallowed any niggling self-suspicion of radicalism, and agreed to serve his King until his death.
What he’d seen of the galaxy had only served to strengthen his conviction that he’d done the right thing in taking the oath. The Kingdom was a civilized place compared to most; its citizens were entitled to lead their lives without interference. And if that meant the ESA occasionally having to get its hands dirty, then so be it, as far as Ralph was concerned. A society worth having is worth protecting.
And thanks to its own nature, Ombey should definitely be able to cope better than Lalonde. Although the very systems which made it more able also gave the enemy a greater opportunity to spread its subversion. The virus carriers had been slow to travel on Lalonde. Here they would suffer no such restrictions.
Cathal Fitzgerald cut the flyer’s fusion drive when they were two hundred kilometres above Xingu. Gravity took over, pulling the flyer down. Its magnetic field expanded, applying subtle pressures to the tenuous gases pushing against the fuselage. Buoyant at the centre of a sparkling cushion of ions, the flyer banked to starboard and began a gentle glide-spiral down towards the spaceport below.
They were a hundred and fifty kilometres high when the flight computer datavised a priority secure signal from Roche Skark into Ralph’s neural nanonics.
“We might have a problem developing,” the ESA director told him. “A civil passenger flight from Pasto to Atherstone is having trouble with its electronic systems, nothing critical but the glitches are constant. I’d like to bring you in on the Privy Council security committee to advise.”
“Yes, sir,” Ralph acknowledged. The datavise broadened to a security level one sensenviron conference. Ralph appeared to be sitting at an oval table in a plain white bubble room with walls at an indeterminate distance.
Admiral Farquar was sitting at the head of the table, with Roche Skark and the ISA director Jannike Dermot flanking him. Ralph’s neural nanonics identified the other three people present. Next to the ISA director was Commander Deborah Unwin, head of Ombey’s Strategic Defence network; Ryle Thorne, Ombey’s national Home Office minister, was placed next to her. Ralph found himself with Roche Skark on one side, and Leonard DeVille on the other.
“The plane is seven minutes from Atherstone,” Deborah Unwin said. “We have to make a decision.”
“What is the plane’s current status?” Ralph asked.
“The pilot was instructed to turn back to Pasto by my flight controllers as part of the quarantine procedures. And that’s when he reported his difficulties. He says he’ll be endangering the passengers if he has to fly all the way back to Pasto. And if it’s a genuine malfunction he will be.”
“We can hardly go around using our SD platforms on civil aircraft just because they have a dodgy processor,” Ryle Thorne said.
“On the contrary, sir,” Ralph said. “In this situation we have to maintain a policy of guilty until proven innocent. You cannot allow that plane to land in the capital, not under any circumstances. Not now.”
“If he has to fly back to Xingu he may well kill everyone on board,” the minister protested. “The plane could be downed in the ocean.”
“Atherstone has a high proportion of military bases in the surrounding district,” Admiral Farquar said. “If necessary the plane can simply sit on a landing pad surrounded by marines until we work out a satisfactory method of detecting if the virus is present.”
“Is the pilot using his neural nanonics to communicate with flight control?” Ralph asked.
“Yes,” Deborah said.
“Okay, then it’s a reasonable assumption that he’s not been sequestrated. If you can guarantee a landing pad can be guarded securely, I say use it. But the plane must remain sealed until we find out what’s happened to the embassy trio.”
“Good enough,” Admiral Farquar said.
“I’ll put the marines at Sapcoat base on active status as of now,” Deborah said. “That’s over a hundred kilometres from Atherstone. The plane can reach it easily enough.”
“A hundred kilometres is a safe enough distance,” Ryle Thorne said smoothly.
Ralph didn’t like the minister’s attitude; he seemed to be treating this as if it were a minor natural incident, like a hurricane or earthquake. But then the minister had to go back to his constituents every five years and convince them he was acting in their best interests. Ordering SD platforms to fire on their fellow citizens might be hard to explain away in public relations terms. That was one of the reasons the royal Saldanas had a parliament to advise them. An insulating layer around the blame. Elected politicians were always culpable and replaceable.
“I’d also suggest that once the plane’s landed you use an orbital sensor satellite to mount a permanent observation on it,” Ralph said. “Just in case there’s any attempt to break out. That way we can use the SD platforms as a last resort; sterilize the entire area.”
“That strikes me as somewhat excessive,” Ryle Thorne said with elaborate politeness.
“Again, no, sir. On Lalonde the enemy were able to use their electronic warfare capability to interfere with the LDC’s observation satellite from the ground; they fuzzed the images to quite a degree. I’d say this fallback option is the least we should be doing.”
“Ralph was brought in because of his experience in combating the virus,” Roche Skark said, smiling at the minister. “He got off Lalonde precisely because he instigated these kinds of protective measures.”
Ryle Thorne gave a short nod.
“Pity he didn’t protect us from the virus,” Jannike muttered. Except in a sensenviron context nothing was really sotto voce; all utterances were deliberate.
Ralph glanced over at her, but the computer-synthesised image of her face gave nothing away.
Chapman Adkinson was getting mighty tired of the continual stream of datavises he was receiving from flight control. Worried, too. He wasn’t dealing with civil flight control at Atherstone anymore; they’d gone off-line eight minutes ago. Military protocols were being enforced now, the whole planet’s traffic control being routed through the Royal Navy operations centre on Guyana. And they were none too sympathetic to his condition.
Esparta was rolling by below the plane, one of the lush national parks which surrounded the capital. A jungle scarred only by the occasional Roman-straight motorway and dachas belonging to the aristocracy. The ocean was five minutes behind them.
His neural nanonics were accessing the external sensors, but the visual image was only being analysed in secondary mode, mainly to back up the inertial guidance system which he no longer wholly trusted. He was concentrating on schematics of the plane’s systems. Twenty per cent of the onboard processors were suffering from random dropouts. Some had come back on-line after a few seconds, others remained dead. The diagnostic programs he ran simply couldn’t pinpoint the problem. And, even more disturbing, in the last fifteen minutes he’d been experiencing spikes and reductions in the power circuits.
That was what had made him argue with the military controllers. Processor glitches were an acceptable menace; there was so much redundancy built into the plane’s electronic architecture it could survive an almost total shutdown; but power loss was in a different hazard category altogether. Chapman Adkinson had already decided that if they did try to force him to fly back over the ocean he was going to ditch there and then, and to hell with the penalties they’d load into his licence. The biohazard in Xingu couldn’t be that lethal, surely?
“Chapman, stand by for some updated landing coordinates,” Guyana’s flight controller datavised. “We’re diverting you.”
“Where to?” Chapman asked sceptically.
“Sapcoat base. They’re prepping a clean reception area for you. Looks like the passengers are going to have to stay on board for a while once you’re down.”
“As long as we get down.”
The coordinates came through, and Chapman fed them directly into the flight computer. Twelve minutes to Sapcoat. He could accept that. The plane banked gently to port, and began to curve away from the city which lay somewhere beyond the horizon’s black and silver heat shimmer.
It was a signal for the glitches to quadruple. Circuits began to drop out at a frightening rate. A quarter of the system’s schematics flicked to a daunting black, leaving only ghostly colourless outlines where functional hardware had been a moment before. Power to the two rear starboard compressors failed completely. He could hear the high-pitched background whine deepening as the blades slowed. The flight computer’s compensation program went primary, but too many control surfaces had shut down for it to be truly effective.
“Mayday, mayday,” Chapman datavised. Even his primary transmitter had failed. Backup processors were activated. The fuselage began to vibrate and judder, as if the plane were ploughing through a patch of choppy air.
His neural nanonics reported a stream of datavises from the passenger cabin, querying the shaking and sudden loss of in-flight entertainment processors. He called up a procedural file and shunted it into what was left of the plane’s entertainment circuits. Seatback holoscreens should be playing a placebo message about clear air turbulence and the precautions their pilot was now instigating.
“What is it?” flight control asked.
“Losing power and height. Systems failure rate increasing. Shit! I just lost the tail rudder databus.” He datavised an emergency code into the flight computer. A silvery piston slid out of the horseshoe console in front of him, a dull chrome-red pistol grip on the end. It reached his lap and rotated silently through ninety degrees. Chapman grabbed it. Manual control. Christ, I’ve never used one outside of Aviation Authority simulations!
The datavise bandwidth to the flight computer started to shrink. He prioritized the schematic to display absolute essentials. Holographic displays on the console came alive, duplicating the information.
“Find me a flat patch of land, now, damn it!” How he was going to bring the plane down in VTOL configuration with both the starboard compressors out wasn’t something he wanted to think about. Maybe a motorway, and use it like a runway?
“Request denied.”
“What?”
“You may not land anywhere but the authorized coordinate.”
“Fuck you! We’re going to crash.”
“Sorry, Chapman, you cannot land anywhere outside Sapcoat.”
“I can’t reach Sapcoat.” His datavised control linkage to the flight computer began to fail. The pistol grip shifted slightly in his hand, and he felt the plane tilt in tandem.
Careful! he told himself. A firm pressure on the grip, and the nose began to edge back. The holographic horizon graphic showed he was still in a shallow dive. More pressure, and the descent rate slowed.
The door into the cockpit slid open. Chapman Adkinson was wired too tight to care. It was supposed to be codelocked, but the way hardware was crashing . . .
“Why have you altered course?”
Chapman shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The guy was dressed in a cheap suit, five years out-of-date. He wasn’t just calm, he was serene. Incredible! He must feel the plane’s buffeting.
“Technical problem,” Chapman managed to gasp. “We’re putting down at the nearest landing pad that can handle an emergency.” The pistol grip was fighting his every movement. And now the holographic displays were wobbling. He wasn’t sure if he could trust them anymore. “Get back into your seat now, fella.”
The man simply walked up behind the pilot’s chair and slid his head over Chapman’s shoulder, peering out of the narrow curving windscreen. “Where is Atherstone?”
“Look, pal—” Pain lanced deep into his thigh. Chapman grunted roughly at the shock of it. The man’s left index finger was resting lightly on his leg, a small circle of his uniform’s trouser fabric was burning around it.
Chapman swatted at the small blue flames, eyes blinking away sudden tears. His thigh muscle was smarting abominably.
“Where is Atherstone?” the man repeated. “I have to go there.”
Chapman found his calmness more unnerving than the plane’s failure. “Listen, I wasn’t joking when I said we had technical problems. We’re going to be lucky if we make it over this sodding jungle. Forget about Atherstone.”
“I will hurt you again, harder this time. And I will keep on hurting you until you take me to Atherstone.”