"The Naked God - Faith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F.)

Chapter 08

Right from the start, Al knew it was going to be a bad day.

First it was the body. Al was hardly a stranger to blood, he’d seen and been responsible for enough slaughter in his time, but this was turning his stomach. It had been a while before anyone noticed poor old Bernhard Allsop was missing. Who was going to care that the little weasel wasn’t getting underfoot like usual? It was only when he skipped a couple of duty details that Leroy finally got round to asking where he was. Even then, it wasn’t an urgent request. Bernhard’s processor block didn’t respond to datavises, so everyone assumed he was goofing off. A couple of guys were asked to keep an eye out. After another day, Leroy was concerned enough to bring it up at a meeting of senior lieutenants. A search was organized.

The security cameras found him eventually. At least, they located the mess. Confirming first what, then who it was had to be done in person.

There was a quite extraordinary amount of blood smearing the floor, walls, and ceiling. So much so, Al figured that more than one person had been whacked. But Emmet Mordden said the quantity was about right for a single adult male.

Al lit a cigar, puffing heavily. Not for pleasure; the smoke covered the smell of decaying flesh. Patricia’s face was creased up in dismay as they stood around the corpse. Emmet held a handkerchief over his nose as he examined the remains.

The face was recognisably Bernhard. Though even now Al remained slightly doubtful. It was as though the skin had been roughly rearranged into Bernhard’s features. A caricature rather than a natural face. Al had seen doctored photos before, this was the body equivalent.

“You’re sure?” Al asked Emmet, who was prodding the blood-drenched clothing with a long stylus.

“Pretty much, Al. These are his clothes. That’s his processor block. And you can’t expect his face to be a close match, we only see illusions of each other, remember. His body’s face was becoming him, but it takes time.”

Al grunted, and took another look. The skin had shrunk to wrap tightly round the skull and jaw; a lot of capillaries had ruptured, and the eyeballs had burst. He turned away. “Yeah, okay.”

Emmet plucked the processor block from Bernhard’s rigid, clawed fingers, and gestured a couple of non-possessed medical orderlies to take over. They manoeuvred the desiccated corpse into a body bag. Both of them were sweating badly, struggling against nausea.

“So what happened?” Al asked.

“He was trapped in here by the pressure doors, then someone opened the airlock.”

“I thought that was impossible.”

“This airlock’s been tricked out,” Patricia said. “I checked. The electronic safeties were blown to shit, and someone sliced through the swing rods.”

“You mean it was a proper professional hit,” Al said.

Emmet was keying commands into Bernhard’s block. There were few coherent responses, small blue spirals of light drifted through the holographic screen, fracturing any icons which did emerge from the management program. “I think somebody datavised a virus into this. I’ll have to link it up to a desktop and run a diagnostic to be sure. But he wasn’t able to call for help.”

“Kiera,” Al said. “She did this. Nothing tripped the alarms. They knew he’d be using this corridor, and when. It takes organization to set up a hit this smart. She’s the only one up here who could pull it off.”

Emmet scraped at the bloody wall with the tip of his stylus. By now, the blood had dried to a fragile black film. Tiny dark flakes snowed away from the composite instrument. “Several days old, even taking vacuum boiling into account,” Emmet said. “Bernhard never turned up for his assignment during the victory party, so I guess that’s when it was done.”

“Gives Kiera an alibi,” Patricia said, sullen with resentment.

“Hey!” Al spat. “There ain’t no goddamn federal courts up here. She doesn’t get no fancy lawyer to smartmouth her out of this by screwing the jury’s mind. If I say she did it, then that’s it. Period. The bitch is guilty.”

“She won’t give herself up easily,” Patricia said. “The way she’s been stirring things over Trafalgar, the fleet is starting to get jittery about the Navy retaliating. She’s got a lot of support, Al.”

“Shit!” Al glared at the body bag, cursing Bernhard. Why couldn’t the little asshole be stronger? Fight back against the bastards who whacked him, at least take a couple of them back to the beyond with him. Save me all this grief.

He relented. Bernhard had been loyal right from the moment he swung by in his make-believe Oldsmobile and picked up Al back in San Angeles. In fact that loyalty was probably what got him whacked. Chew away at the middle ranks, the really valuable ones, and you erode the power base of the guy at the top.

That motherfucking bitch.

“This is interesting.” Emmet was bending down to examine part of the corridor floor at one end of the bloodstain. “These marks here. Could be footprints.”

Suddenly interested, Al went over to take a look. The splotches of dried blood were roughly the right shape and size of someone’s boot sole. There were eight of them, becoming progressively smaller as they led towards the airlock.

He laughed abruptly. Goddamn. I’m doing fucking detective work! Me, a cop.

“I get it,” he said. “If they made prints, then the blood was still wet, right? That means it happened around the time Bernhard was killed.”

Emmet grinned. “You don’t need me.”

“Sure I do.” Al clapped him on the shoulder. “Emmet, my boy, you just made chief of police for this whole crummy rock. I want to know who did this, Emmet. I really want to know.”

Emmet scratched the back of his head, looking round the grisly murder scene, thinking out what needed to be done. These days, getting put on the spot by Al hardly affected his bladder at all. “A forensic team would be useful. I’ll check with Avram, see if we’ve got any police lab people that I can use up here.”

“If there ain’t, get them sent up from the planet,” Al said.

“Right.” Emmet was looking at the pressure door. “The guys doing the hit must have been close; that’s the only way to stop him from getting out. Breaking through a door like this would be no problem to a possessed, even Bernhard.” His stylus tapped the glass port in the middle of the door. “See? There’s no blood on this, even though it’s sprayed across the rest of the surface. They probably took a look at him, make sure he was dead.”

“If they stayed on the other side of the door, where did the footprints come from?”

“Dunno.” Emmet shrugged.

“This corridor got any of those police spy cameras fitted?”

“Yeah. I’ll review all their memories, but it’s pretty doubtful, Al. These guys are pros.”

“See what you can find for me, my boy. And in the meantime, pass the word, I want you guys taking a few precautions. Bernhard’s only the start. She’s gunning for all of us. And I can’t afford to lose any more of you. Capeesh?”

“I hear you, Al.”

“That’s good. Patricia, I think maybe we should return the compliment.”

Patricia’s thoughts swelled with dark delight. “Sure thing, boss.”

“Hit the bitch hard, someone she relies on. What’s that rat-face SOB always following her round? Got the psychic shit with the hellhawks?”

“Hudson Proctor.”

“That’s the guy. Bust his ass back to the beyond. But make sure he suffers some first, okay?”

There was a bunch of people waiting for Al when he got back to the Nixon suite. Leroy and Silvano, talking in low tones with Jez; worry hovering round them like a persistent fog. One guy (possessed) that Al didn’t recognize, who was being covered by a couple of his soldiers. The stranger had a head filled with the strongest thoughts Al had ever come across. His mind burned on pure anger alone. It deepened a shade when Al came in.

“Je-zus, what is going down here? Silvano?”

“Don’t you remember me, Al?” the stranger asked. The tone was dangerously mocking. His clothes began to change, flowing into the full dress uniform for a lieutenant commander in the Confederation Navy. His face changed as well, stirring Al’s memory.

Jezzibella gave Al a nervous flicker of a smile. “Kingsley Pryor’s back,” she said.

“Hey, Kingsley!” Al smiled broadly. “Man, is it good to see you. Shit, you’re a fucking hero around these parts. You did it, man, you actually fucking did it. You wiped out the whole Confederation Navy single-handed. Can you believe this shit?”

Kingsley Pryor produced the kind of wide-eyed smile that troubled even Al. He wondered if the two soldiers were enough to keep the Navy man down.

“You just go right ahead believing that shit,” Kingsley said. “That’s fine by me. In the meantime, I killed fifteen thousand people for you. Now it’s time for you to keep your end of the bargain. I want my wife, my child, and I’ve decided I want a starship, too. That’s a little bonus you’re going to award me for completing my mission.”

Al spread his arms wide, his thoughts the epitome of reasonableness. “Well, hell, Kingsley, the agreement was you blow up Trafalgar from the inside.”

“GIVE ME CLARISSA AND WEBSTER.”

Al swayed back a pace. Kingsley was actually glowing: a light deep inside his body had flicked on, illuminating his face and uniform. Except for the eyes, they sucked light down. Both soldiers nervously tightened their grip on the Thompson machine guns they were holding.

“All right,” Al said, attempting to calm things down. “Jezus, Kingsley, we’re all on the same side here.” He conjured up a Havana and held it out, smiling.

“Wrong.” Kingsley stuck a rigid finger in the air, preacher-style, and slowly levelled it at Al. “Don’t talk to me about taking sides, you piece of shit. I have died because of you. I have slaughtered my comrades because of you. So don’t you ever ever think you can tell me anything about faith, or trust, or loyalty. Now you either give me my wife and my son, or we settle this right here and now.”

“Hey, I ain’t holding nothing back. What you want, you got. Al Capone don’t break his word. You understand that? We had an agreement. That’s like solid greenback currency around here these days. And I don’t never welsh. Never! You understand? All I got here is my name, that is all I am worth. So you don’t go questioning that. I appreciate how fucked off you are. Okay, you got that right after what’s happened. But you don’t ever say to no one I went back on my promise.”

“Give me my wife and son.”

Al couldn’t understand how Kingsley’s teeth didn’t shatter, the man was crunching his jaw so hard. “No problem. Silvano, take Lieutenant-commander Pryor here to his wife and kid.”

Silvano nodded, and gestured Pryor to the door.

“And nobody laid a finger on them while you were gone,” Al said. “You remember that.”

Pryor turned at the door. “Don’t worry, Mr Capone, I won’t forget anything that’s happened here.”

Al sank down into the nearest chair when he’d gone. His arm curved round Jez for comfort, only to find she was trembling. “Je-zus H Christ fucking wept,” Al wheezed.

“Al,” Jez said firmly. “You have got to get rid of him. He frightened the bejezus out of me. Maybe sending him to Trafalgar wasn’t one of my better ideas.”

“Too fucking true. Leroy, for Christ’s sake tell me you found that kid of his.”

Leroy was running a finger round his collar. He looked scared. “We didn’t, Al. I don’t know where the little brat’s gone. We looked everywhere. He just vanished.”

“Fuck-a-doodle. Kingsley’s going to blow when he finds out. It’ll be a bloodbath. Leroy, you’d better start calling in some of the guys. And no fucking marshmallows, either. It’s going to take a lot of us to pound him.”

“And then he can come straight back into another body,” Jez said. “It just starts over again.”

“I’ll start another search for Webster,” Leroy said. “The kid’s got to be somewhere, for heaven’s sake.”

“Kiera,” Jezzibella said. “If you really did look everywhere for him before, then he’s got to be with Kiera.”

Al shook his head in amazed admiration. “Goddamn, I can’t believe I was dumb enough to let that woman into this rock. She doesn’t miss a single trick.”

Etchells emerged from his wormhole terminus ten thousand kilometres out from Monterey. The asteroid was a small grey disk traversing one of New California’s sunlit turquoise oceans. Drab, but enormously welcoming. He could almost hear his stomach growling from hunger.

New California’s defence network locked on to his hull, and he identified himself to the control centre in Monterey. They cleared him for a five-gee approach. His energy patterning cells couldn’t quite manage that.

Clear a pedestal for me,he told the hellhawks on the docking ledge. I need nutrient fluid.

We all do,pran soo replied tartly. There’s a rota, remember?

Don’t fuck with me, bitch. I’ve been away longer than I expected. I’m exhausted.

And I’m heartbroken.

Pran Soo’s attitude surprised him. Sure, the hellhawks grumbled and quarrelled; and none of them liked him. But this casual superior taunting was something new. He’d have to get to the reason eventually. But that would have to wait. He was genuinely concerned for his condition.

Where the hell have you been?hudson proctor asked.

Hesperi-LN, if you must know.

Where?there was a good deal of puzzlement in hudson’s mind.

Never mind. Just get a pedestal ready for me. And tell Kiera I’m back. There’s a lot she needs to hear.

One of the feeding hellhawks was ordered to disengage from the pedestal it was using, freeing the metal mushroom for Etchells. He swung in over the ledge with little grace as the affinity band filled with gibes and derision about his flight path. Service crews stood well back as the big bitek starship wobbled uncertainly over the docking pedestal. It settled after a laboured descent, and the feed tubules rose up to insert themselves into its reception orifices. He started to gulp down the nutrient fluid as fast as it could be pumped in.

His on-board bitek processors datavised the section of the habitat Kiera had claimed as her own. She was in a lounge overlooking the docking ledge, sitting on one of its long sofas. Her dress was bright scarlet with a tight bodice fastened by cloth buttons. The skirt was loose enough for her to fold her legs up on the sofa, presenting a feline posture to the camera.

Etchells hesitated for a second, enjoying the small sexual thrill that came from so much young, beautifully shaped female skin on show for his benefit. It was a rare thing for him to wish he hadn’t possessed a blackhawk. Kiera could do that. Not many others.

“I was worried about you,” she said. “You are my principal hellhawk, after all. So what happened at the antimatter station?”

“Something odd. I think we’ve got real trouble. This goes way beyond everyone’s little power plays. We’re going to need help.”

Rocio accessed Almaden’s net to watch the repair operation. Deebank had kept his part of the bargain, co-opting all the non-possessed technicians left in the asteroid to work on the nutrient fluid refinery. They had replaced the damaged heat exchanger out on the ledge, resealed the chamber Etchells’s laser had breached, stripped down the machinery and rebuilt it using new components manufactured in their own industrial stations. That just left the electronics.

As soon as the Mindori ’s bulk had settled on one of the asteroid’s three docking pedestals, a team had unloaded the packages from its cargo bay. Integrating the new processors and circuits into the refurbished refinery had taken over a day. Operating programs had to be modified. Then start-up proved an arduous task. There were synthesis tests, integral analysis calibration runs, mechanical inspections, performance examinations, fluid quality reviews. Eventually, the first batch was pumped along the pipes to Mindori ’s pedestal. The hellhawk’s internal bitek taste filters took a sample, evaluating the protein structures suspended within the fluid.

“Tastes good,” Rocio told the asteroid’s expectant population. Their cheers at his verdict reverberated out from the synthesis refinery chamber, spreading like a high-frequency quake throughout the lonely rock.

“Do we have a deal?” a smiling Deebank asked.

“Absolutely. My colleagues will start lifting your people off. Possessed to the nearest world which Capone has seeded; non-possessed to the Edenists.”

The haggard non-possessed nearest to the AV pillar broadcasting the link up heaved a huge sigh of relief. The news was passed on back to their hostage families.

Deebank and Rocio carried on their negotiations. The evacuation would be staged. First the refinery had to be checked out thoroughly for long-term continuous operation, any modifications to be made before the crews left. Mechanoids had to be adapted for specialised maintenance work. Technicians would stay on to train the disappointingly few hellhawk possessors who laid claim to a scientific background. The asteroid’s fusion generators were to be overhauled for similar long-term duties. Vast quantities of raw hydrocarbon chemicals for the refinery were to be prepared and stored in tanks which had yet to be fabricated. Fuel supply reserves of deuterium and He3 were to be established so they could feed the remaining generators (not a problem now the settlement’s biosphere cavern was to be powered down).

We can begin,rocio told pran soo. Get our core sympathisers on high orbit patrol out here. They’ve just pulled transport duties. We can start ferrying the population to a possessed world.

Do you want a general exodus to Almaden?

Not yet. We’ll keep this development to our group alone for now. It would be nice if more of us received a full weapons load before the Organization realizes we’re deserting. Kiera is bound to try some kind of attack when she finds out.

There aren’t many of us who’ll follow her.

I know, but we play it safe. There’s no telling what that bitch is capable of.

Jed and Beth stood behind the lounge’s curving window, watching the hellhawks arrive. The creatures swooped down out of the stars to land on the two remaining pedestals. Blunt cylindrical crew buses trundled over the ledge, airlock tubes extending eagerly to mate with the life support capsule hatches.

A small square in the corner of the window shimmered with grey light and turned into Rocio’s smiling face. “Looks like we’ve done it,” he said. “I want to thank you; especially you, Jed. I know this hasn’t been easy.”

“Are they coming on board?” Beth asked.

“No. I’m swallowing back to Monterey in a couple of hours. I’ll be missed if I don’t report back at the end of my patrol orbit.”

Jed’s arm went round Beth, instinctively protective. “You said you’d take us to one of the Edenist habitats,” he said.

“I will. All the non-possessed from Almaden will be handed over to them once our preparations here are finished. You’ll go with them.”

“Why can’t we go first? We’re the ones who helped you. You just said.”

“Because I haven’t even spoken to the Edenists about this, yet. I don’t want their voidhawks showing up here and wrecking everything. Just be patient. You have my word I’ll get you out of this.”

Rocio cancelled his link to the lounge and began to alter the shape of his distortion field. It pushed him up off the docking pedestal, and he slipped away from the ledge. One of the hellhawks that had just swallowed in from New California passed him as it swooped down towards the vacated pedestal. They exchanged excited smile images across the affinity band.

Rocio’s mood lifted further as he accelerated away from the asteroid. It was all coming together beautifully. His next priority was gathering as many fully-armed hellhawks as possible and deploying them to guard Almaden. Then in another couple of days he and Pran Soo would inform the remaining hellhawks about Almaden. Everyone would have to make their choice. He didn’t expect many to stay with Kiera; Etchells, of course, probably Lopex; others who hadn’t come to terms with their new form, or didn’t fully understand its potential. Not enough to ruin the plan.

He swallowed back to New California, resuming his high-altitude patrol orbit. The planet turned peacefully two million kilometres below him. His distortion field swept out, carefully propagated ripples testing and probing the fabric of space-time. No voidhawks within a hundred thousand kilometres. Nor was there any sign of stealthed weapons or sensor globes heading in towards the Organization ships and stations. Nobody asked him where he’d been.

An internal sensor check showed him the young kids playing some kind of tag game along the main corridor. Jed and Beth were in their cabin, screwing again. Rocio sighed fondly. What it was to be a teenager.

Two hours later, Hudson Proctor ordered him to report to the docking ledge.

What for?rocio asked. I have enough nutrient fluid for now.in fact, he had filled every fluid reserve bladder at almaden. if they were calling him in ahead of schedule for a feed, he’d have to vent it all before he got to Monterey.

We’re going to install some auxiliary fusion generators in your cargo bays,hudson proctor said. You’ve got the connections to receive power directly from them, haven’t you?

Yes. But why?

There’s a long-range mission being planned. You fit the parameters.

What mission?

Kiera will tell you when you’ve been prepped.

Will I be using combat wasps as well?

Yes, we’ll give you a full complement. They’ll be loaded at the same time as the fusion generators. Your lasers need checking, too.

I’m on my way.

Al stared at Kiera, not quite believing she had the balls to turn up in his suite like this. Jez was at his side, arm tucked through his; Mickey, Silvano, and Patricia were bunched up behind him, along with half a dozen soldiers. Kiera was backed up by Hudson Proctor and eight of her goons on bodyguard duty. Animosity seeped out from both groups, thickening the air.

“You said it was urgent,” Al said.

Kiera nodded. “It is. Etchells has just returned.”

“That’s the hellhawk who ran from the antimatter station when things looked tough?”

“He didn’t run. He found out the Navy was up to something strange there. He thinks one of their ships was loaded with antimatter before the station was destroyed. Afterwards, it rendezvoused with a voidhawk, and the two of them flew to Hesperi-LN. That’s the Tyrathca world.”

“I heard of them. They’re like Martians, or something.”

“Xenocs, yes.”

“So what’s this got to do with us?”

“The voidhawk and the other ship were very interested in an old Tyrathca spaceship that’s orbiting Hesperi-LN. Etchells thinks they put a team on board. After that, they took off for the Orion Nebula. That’s where the Tyrathca came from originally. And it’s a long way away.”

“One thousand six hundred light-years,” Jezzibella said.

“So?” Al asked. He couldn’t work out her angle. “So what’s this got to do with us?”

“Think about it,” Kiera said. “We’re in the middle of the biggest crisis the human race has ever known. And the Confederation Navy breaks the one law it enforces above all others. It actually helps fill a starship up with antimatter. Then that ship and another fly somewhere no other human has ever been before. And they’re looking for something. What?”

“Fuck’s sake,” Al muttered. “How do I know?”

“It has to be something very, very important to them. Something the Tyrathca have got and the Navy wants. Bad enough to risk a war. Etchells said they actually fired on the Tyrathca ships when they were orbiting Hesperi-LN. Whatever it is, they are desperate to get their hands on it.”

“You trying to jerk me around here?” Al asked Kiera. He was losing his cool about the whole phoney meeting. Then, he always did when the talk turned to that space and machines stuff he couldn’t quite follow. “We’ve been through all this superweapon shit before. I sent Oscar Kern and some guys after that Mzu broad and an Alchemist bomb. Fuck lot of good that did me.”

“This is different,” Kiera insisted. “I don’t know exactly what the Navy’s after, but it has to be something they can use against us. If it is a weapon, then it must be an extremely powerful one. Ordinary weapons are useless against us. If the Navy does put together enough force to harm us, we just leave this universe behind. They know that, especially after Ketton. We automatically protect ourselves; nothing can reach us on the other side. Nothing human, that is.”

“Ho boy; lady, have you ever changed your tune. Yesterday you were telling me how nothing the longhairs dream up could ever touch us if we take New California out of here.”

“This is xenoc technology. We don’t know what it’s capable of.”

“This is bullshit,” Al said in exasperation. “Maybe. If. Perhaps. Might be. You got zip and you know it. Know what? I heard this speech once before. The prosecution lawyer at my last trial used it. Everyone knew it was a bunch of crap then, and there ain’t nothing changed since. And let me tell you, dark sister, you ain’t even as convincing as he was.”

“If the Confederation has something that can reach the planets we’ve removed, then we’ve already lost.”

“Yeah? What’s the matter, Kiera, running scared?”

“I can see I’m wasting my time. I should have known this was going to fly straight over your head.” She turned to go.

Al got a hold on his temper. “Okay. Hit me.”

“We send some ships after them,” Kiera said. “I’m already preparing three hellhawks for pursuit duty. Just forget about our beef for one hour, and assign some of your frigates to go with them.”

“You mean frigates armed with antimatter,” Al said.

“Of course. We have to have superior firepower. If possible, we capture the Tyrathca weapon. If not, we destroy it along with the Navy ships.”

Al chewed the idea over for a minute, enjoying the way Kiera got all antsy at the delay. “You want to cut a deal?” he asked. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you, and this is only because you’ve come over all noble about our future. I’ll let you have a couple of frigates; I’ll even arm them with half a dozen antimatter combat wasps each for you. How’s that?”

Kiera gave a relieved smile. “That’s good for me.”

“Glad to hear it.” Al’s grin shrank to nothing. “In return, all you gotta do is give me Webster.”

“What?”

“Webster fucking Pryor. That’s what.”

Kiera gave Hudson Proctor a confused look. The general shrugged with equal bewilderment. “Never heard of him,” he said.

“Then until you remember, it’s no deal,” Al said.

Kiera glared at him. For a moment, Al thought she was going to go for it.

“Fuckhead!” Kiera yelled. She spun round and stormed out.

“She’s sure got a way with words,” Al chuckled. “Real lady.”

Jezzibella couldn’t share his humour. She had a troubled expression on her face as she regarded the big doors that had closed behind Kiera. “Maybe we should have a talk with Etchells ourselves,” she said. “Find out what the hell is going on.”

Everyone around Kiera kept very quiet as they took the lift up to the Hilton’s lobby. Her fury at Capone’s stupidity gradually cooled to an iron-hard determination. Capone would have to be disposed of, and quickly. No question about it.

After that, there were new questions.

Etchells’s story bothered her badly. She simply couldn’t believe the Navy would send ships to the Orion Nebula without a very good reason. It had to be connected to possession somehow. With a weapon as the obvious choice. Infuriatingly, if that was the case, then Capone had been right all along about staying here and making a stand.

If she stuck with the original plan, to transfer the Organization down to New California and leave the universe, then there’d be no way to counter any future developments which the Confederation might make. Always a factor, but now requiring more urgent consideration.

And of course, once she gained control of the Organization fleet, she could dispatch a whole squadron of antimatter-armed frigates to the Orion Nebula. But then, she’d have to go with them. A quick glance at Hudson Proctor confirmed that. He was loyal, but only because she was the ride he’d chosen to get him to the top. Give him the chance to intercept a Tyrathca superweapon by himself, and he’d do to her what she was about to do to Capone. It was a bad corner to be backed into.

The lift door opened and she strode out into the lobby. This section of the Hilton was actually embedded into the asteroid’s rock, connecting the external tower structure with the rest of the habitation zone via a warren of corridors. Several Organization gangsters were lounging around in the couches, drinking and talking as they were served by a non-possessed barkeeper. Three more gangsters were leaning against the long reception desk as a team of non-possessed cleaners worked to clear up the last of the trash left over from the Trafalgar victory party.

Kiera took it all in with a quick scan, trying not to let her tension show. She knew Capone’s people wouldn’t hassle her on the way in. Getting out was something different altogether. All the gangsters had fallen silent, staring at her.

One of the exits led to a station serving Monterey’s small metro tube network. It would be the quickest way of returning to the docking ledge territory she’d marked out as her own. But the carriages could be tampered with. Especially likely now they’d found Bernhard Allsop.

“We’ll walk,” she announced to her entourage.

They pushed through the tall glass doors and went out into the wide public hall outside. Nobody tried to interfere or block them. The few pedestrians in the hall gave them a wide berth as they marched along determinedly.

“How long until the hellhawks are refitted?” Kiera asked.

“Another couple of hours,” Hudson Proctor said. He frowned. “Jull von Holger says the SD sensors have lost track of the Tamaran. It was on high-orbit patrol.”

“Did the voidhawks kill it?”

“I never heard a death cry; neither did any of the other hellhawks. And ambushing our ships would be a big change of policy for the Edenists.”

“Run an SD sensor check on the other patrol hellhawks, make sure they’re still with us.” Kiera let out a disgusted breath. Another complication. She didn’t like to think about the hellhawks defecting to the Edenists. Their offers of refuge were still pretty constant from what Hudson, Jull, and the other affinity-capable told her. The only other alternative—that Capone had finally repaired a nutrient fluid refinery—was even worse.

A few metres in front of her, a non-possessed shambling along behind a trolley loaded with food suddenly veered across the hall. Annoyed, she stepped sideways to avoid the wayward trolley. The man pushing it was a wreck, unshaven, his grey jump-suit crumpled and dirty, oily hair smeared across his brow. A haggard face was screwed up in an expression of total anguish. She’d paid him no attention, just like all the other non-possessed she encountered in Monterey, because his mind was a standard jumble of misery and fear.

He opened his arms wide, and grabbed her in a fierce bear hug that turned into a rugby tackle. “Mine!” he howled. “You’re mine.” They crashed painfully to the floor, Kiera’s knee cracking against the carbon-concrete. “Darling, baby, Marie, I’m here. I’m here.”

“Daddy!” She didn’t say it. The voice came from within, rising irresistibly from Marie Skibbow’s imprisoned mind. Incredulity poured through Kiera’s thoughts, smothering her own responses. Marie was sweeping back towards full control.

“I’m going to get her out of you, I promise,” Gerald shouted. “I know how. Loren told me.”

Hudson Proctor finally recovered from his shock, and leant over the squirming couple to grab Gerald’s sleeve. He pulled hard, muscles reinforced by energistic strength, attempting to tear the deranged man free from Kiera. Gerald stabbed a small power cell against Hudson’s hand, its naked electrodes digging deep. Hudson screamed as the excruciating bolt of electricity flowed across his skin. He lurched back in terror and pain, a bud of flame sizzling bright from his hand. Two of the bodyguards pounced on Gerald, trapping his legs and one arm. He bucked about frantically.

Kiera went skidding over the floor, barely aware of the disorderly scrum tumbling around her. Her limbs were starting to move in the way which Marie commanded, as the girl’s thoughts expanded rapidly back along their old pathways. She concentrated on fighting the girl’s re-emergence.

Gerald jabbed the power cell towards Marie’s face, the electrodes halting millimetres from her eyes. “Get out of her,” he raged. “Out! Out! She’s mine. My baby!”

One of the bodyguards grabbed his wrist and twisted hard. Gerald’s bone shattered. The power cell dropped to the floor. Gerald screamed in fury. He slammed his elbow back with berserker strength. It caught the bodyguard in his stomach, doubling him up.

“Daddy!”

“Marie?” Gerald gasped, fearful with hope.

“Daddy.” Marie’s voice was dwindling. “Daddy, help.”

Gerald scrabbled round desperately for the power cell. His cold fingers closed around it. Hudson Proctor landed on his back, and the two of them rolled over together.

“Marie!” He could see her beautiful face in front of him. Shaking like a dog coming out of deep water, hair fanning round.

“Not any more,” she snarled. Her fist smashed dead into Gerald’s nose.

Kiera slowly climbed to her feet, swaying slightly as long tremors clattered along her body. The bitch girl was back where she belonged, weeping at the centre of her brain. One of the bodyguards was curled up on the floor, clutching his abdomen, cheek resting in a small puddle of vomit. Hudson Proctor was hopping about, shaking his hand violently as if it was still on fire. A deep pock of blackened flesh above his knuckles was trailing smoke, filling the air with a disgusting smell. His eyes were shedding tears of pain. The remaining bodyguards were standing round Gerald, spoiling for trouble.

“I’m going to kill the bastard!” Hudson shouted. He kicked Gerald hard in the ribs.

“Enough,” Kiera said. She wiped a shaking hand across her forehead. Her tangle of hair stirred itself, straightening out and flowing back to its usual dark glossy arrangement. She looked down at Gerald. He was groaning faintly, fingers pawing weakly at his side where Hudson had kicked him. Blood was pumping out from his flattened nose. His thoughts and emotions were a discordant nonsense. “How the fuck did he get here?” she grumbled.

“You know him?” Hudson asked in surprise.

“Oh yes. This is Marie Skibbow’s father. Last seen on Lalonde. Which was last seen departing this universe.”

Hudson gave an uncomfortable flinch. “You don’t think they’re coming back, do you?”

“No.” Kiera glanced along the hall. Three of Al’s gangsters had emerged from the Hilton’s lobby to look at what was going on.

“We have to move. Get him up,” she told her bodyguards.

They grabbed Gerald under his shoulders and hauled him upright. His dazed eyes peered at Kiera. “Marie,” he pleaded.

“I don’t know how you got here, Gerald, but we’ll find that out eventually. You must really love your daughter to have attempted this.”

“Marie, baby, Daddy’s here. Can you hear me? I’m here. Please, Marie.”

Kiera bent her bruised knee, wincing at the lick of pain which the movement brought. She focused her energistic power around the joint, feeling it ease up. “Ordinarily, just working you over ready to receive a soul from the beyond would be punishment enough. But after all you’ve done, you deserve better.” She smiled, leaning in closer. Her voice became husky. “You’re going to be possessed, Gerald. And the lucky boy who wins your body is going to get me as well. I’m going to take him to bed, and let him fuck me any way he wants, as much as he wants. And you’re going to feel it happening the whole time, Gerald. You’re going to feel yourself fucking your darling daughter.”

“Noooo!” Gerald howled, shuddering in his captor’s grip. “No, you can’t. You can’t!”

Kiera slowly licked Gerald’s cheek, holding his head fast as he tried to squirm away. Her mouth arrived at his ear. “It won’t be Marie’s first perversion, Gerald,” she whispered smoothly. “I enjoy how hot this body gets when I use it to perform my deviancies. And I have a lot of them, as you’ll find out.”

Gerald began a tormented wailing; his knees buckled. “It hurts again,” he burbled. “My head hurts. I can’t see anything. Marie? Where are you, Marie?”

“You’ll see her, Gerald, I promise I’ll open your eyes for you.” Kiera jerked her head at the bodyguards holding the wretched madman. “Bring him.”

The office Emmet Mordden had claimed for himself was on the same corridor as the tactical operations centre. Its previous occupant, the Admiral commanding New California’s SD network, had favoured striking colours for his furniture. The easy chairs were purple, scarlet, lemon, and emerald, while his curving desk was a perfect mirror. A continual holographic screen formed a narrow band circling the room half-way up the wall, showing a view out over a coral reef colonized by some xenoc species of aquatic termites. Emmet didn’t mind, like all possessed he enjoyed the impact of strong colours, and found the ocean relaxing. Besides, there was a very powerful desktop processor which allowed him to track down most of the problems he was given, and he was close to the Organization’s communication centre when a crisis hit—like five times a day. The admiral also had an excellent stash of booze.

When Al came in he gave the easy chairs a disapproving grunt. “I gotta sit in one of those? Je-zus, Emmet, don’t you tell no one. I got an image around here.” Al sat in the one nearest the desk and rested his fedora on its wide arm. He took a longer look round. Same as everywhere else in the asteroid. Trash piling up, food wrappers and cups, along with a pile of clothes in one corner waiting for the laundry. If anyone should have room service sorted, he expected it to be Emmet. Bad sign that he hadn’t. But the brain boy had been busy in other ways. His desk was covered in those electric calculation machines, all stitched together with glass wire. Picture screens lined the edge of the desk, standing on things like sheet music racks; the whole set up was hurried, just out of the workshop. “You been busy by the looks of things.”

“I have.” Emmet gave him a pensive look. “Al, I gotta tell you, I’ve wound up with more questions than when we started.”

“Figures.”

“First off, I checked the corridor cameras, and all the ones round about that area. They came to a big zero. I don’t know who killed Bernhard, but they definitely messed with the camera processors. The memories were deleted, someone used a codebuster against our protocols.”

“Emmet . . . come on man, you know I don’t grab any of that shit.”

“Sorry, Al. Okay, it’s like the photos the cameras take are automatically locked inside a safe. Well, somebody cracked it, took the photos out, then locked it up again behind them.”

“Shit. So no pictures, huh?”

“Not in the corridor, no. So I widened the search and hunted through the cameras outside, the ones covering the ledge.” He tapped one of the makeshift screens. “Watch.”

A picture of the docking ledge sprang up. They were looking down on the airlock as it jetted air out to the stars. Two spacesuited figures stood watching it. One of them started bounding towards the open hatch. After a short interval, the other one followed him.

“Nothing happens for a couple of minutes,” Emmet said.

The image zipped with static, then the two spacesuits emerged from the airlock and carried on walking down the ledge.

“The footprint guys?” Al suggested.

“I think so. But I don’t think they’re part of Bernhard’s hit.”

“Sure they are. They didn’t holler about what happened.”

“They’re in spacesuits, so they’re not possessed. Look at it from their angle. They’ve just stumbled over the newly dead corpse of one of your senior lieutenants, and they’ve even got his blood on their boots. There’s no one else around they can point the finger at. What would you do?”

“Keep my mouth shut,” Al agreed. “Do you know who they are?”

“This is where it gets odd. I backtracked them; they came out of a hellhawk called Mindori .”

“Goddamn! Kiera’s people.”

“I don’t think so.” The camera memory played on, showing the two spacesuited figures getting into a small truck and driving it round to another airlock. “I couldn’t get a record off the cameras in this section either. So I don’t know what they got up to inside. But it was a different program which erased their memories, not the same one used in Bernhard’s hit.” One of the spacesuited figures re-emerged onto the docking ledge and loaded several trays of small packages onto the truck. It was then driven back to the Mindori . The figure eventually climbed back up into the hellhawk’s life support module.

“Kiera doesn’t use non-possessed to crew her hellhawks,” Emmet said. “And that guy was still on board when it took off. The other one must still be inside the habitat.”

“Je-zus. He’s walking around in here?”

“Looks that way. All we know for sure is that they’re nothing to do with Kiera.”

“But he could be the goddamn Confederation Navy. Some kind of assassin. Their version of Kingsley Pryor.”

“I’m not so sure, Al. Those boxes in the truck. I ran a search through our store’s inventory. It’s not exactly tight at the best of times, but there’s a lot of electronics I can’t account for. I can’t see the Confederation Navy breaking in here to steal a truck full of spare parts. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Al stared at the screen, which had frozen on the last image of the spacesuited guy stepping into Mindori ’s airlock. “All right, so we’ve got two separate things going on here. Kiera hits Bernhard, and a hellhawk helps someone steal our electrical stuff. The first one I can understand. But the hellhawk . . . Can you figure what it’s doing?”

“No. But it’s back here right now. We can just ask it straight out. Mindori docked on the ledge this morning. Kiera’s got her engineering teams out there fitting it ready for a long-duration flight. Something else to consider: our defence network says another hellhawk has gone missing from its patrol. They’re running a check on the rest to see how many are still there.”

Al leaned back into the chair, and grinned happily. “They could be trying to break free. How long till that food factory they need is fixed?”

“Another week. Five days if we really hustle.”

“Then hustle, Emmet. Meantime I’m going out to take a ride in Cameron. He can talk to the other hellhawks for me, without Kiera listening in.”

Gerald’s fractured thoughts slithered through a universe of darkness and pain. He didn’t know where he was, what he was doing. He didn’t really care. Flashes erupted from time to time as neurons made erratic connections, releasing bright images of Marie. His thoughts clustered round them like worshipful congregations. The reason for such adulation was slipping from him.

Voices began to impinge on his miserable existence. A chorus of whispers. Insistent. Relentless. Growing louder, stronger. They began to intrude on his vague consciousness.

A blast of white-hot pain put him in sudden, frightening contact with his body again.

Let us in. End the torment. We can help.

The pain changed position and texture. Burning.

We can stop it.

I can stop it. Let me in. I want to help.

No, me. I’m the one you need.

Me.

I have the secret to end their torture.

There was sound. Real sound, rattling through the air. His own thin screams. And laughter. Cruel cruel laughter.

Gerald.

No, he told them. No, I won’t. Not again. I’d rather die.

Gerald, let me in. Don’t fight.

I’ll die for Marie. Rather that . . .

Gerald, it’s me. Feel me. Know me. Taste my memories.

She said . . . She said she’d . . . Oh no. Not that. Don’t make me, not with her. No.

I know. I was there. Now let me come through. It’s difficult, I know. But we have to help her. We have to help Marie. This is the only way now.

Astonishment at the soul’s identity crumbled his mental barriers. The soul roared through from the beyond, permeating his body; the energy it brought seething along his limbs, sparkling down his spinal column. Invigorating. New memories invaded his synapses, colliding with the emplaced recollections in cascades of sights, sounds, tastes, and sensation. It wasn’t like before. Before, he’d been confined, shoved down to the very edge of awareness, knowing of the outside by the tiniest trickle of nerve impulses. A passive, near-insensate passenger/prisoner in his own body. This time it was a more equal partnership, though the newcomer was dominant.

Gerald’s eyes opened, a flush of energistic power helping them to focus. Another application finally banished the terrible headache that had raged for so long.

Two of Kiera’s bodyguards were smirking down at him. “Who’s a lucky boy then,” one chortled. “Man, you are in for the shag of a lifetime tonight.”

Gerald raised a hand. Two searing spears of white fire flashed from his fingertips, drilling straight through the craniums of both bodyguards. Four souls gibbered their fury as they plunged back into the beyond.

“I have other plans for this evening, thank you,” said Loren Skibbow.

It had been a while since Al took a ride in his rocketship. Sitting in the fat green-leather couch on the hellhawk’s promenade deck made him realize just how long. He stretched out, putting his feet up.

“Where can I take you, Al?” Cameron’s voice asked from the silver tannoy grill on the wall.

“Just off Monterey, you know.” He needed a break, just a short time alone to get his head around what was happening. In the old days he would have just gone for a drive, maybe take a fishing rod with him. Golf, too, he’d played golf a few times; though not to any rules the Royal and Ancient had ever heard about. Just buddies fooling round on a fine day.

The view through the big forward window showed him the asteroid’s counter-rotating spaceport slipping away overhead as they leapt off the docking ledge. Gravity inside the cabin was rock steady. New California tracked in from the riveted steel rim around the window, a silvery half crescent, like the moon had looked on clear summer nights above Brooklyn. He never could get used to how much cloud planets had. It was amazing anyone on the surface ever saw the sun.

Cameron was curving out from the big asteroid, rolling continually like a playful dolphin. If Al looked back through the portholes down the side of the promenade deck, he could see brilliant sunlight sweeping over the yellow fins and scarlet fuselage.

“Hey, Cameron, can you show me the Orion Nebula?”

The hellhawk’s antics slowed. Its nose swung across the starscape, hunting like a compass needle. “There we go. Should be dead centre in the window now.”

Al saw it then, a delicate haze of light, like God had wet his thumb and smeared a star across the canvas of space. He sat back in the couch and drank cappuccino from a tiny cup as he looked at it. Weird little thing. A fog in space, Emmet said. Where stars are born. The Martians and their death rays lived on the other side.

There was no way he could get his head round that. The idea of the Navy ships going there had frightened Kiera, and even Jez was concerned. But it didn’t connect for him. He was going to have to ask for advice again. He sighed, acknowledging the inevitable. But there were some things he could still take care of by himself. Chicago had more territories, factions and gangs than the whole Confederation put together. He knew how to manipulate them. Make new friends, lose old ones. Apply some heat. Bribe, blackmail, extort. Nobody today, living or dead, had his kind of political experience. Prince of the city. Then, now, and always.

“Cameron, I want to talk to a hellhawk called Mindori , and I want it confidential.”

The sharply pointed scarlet nose began to turn, sending the nebula sliding from view. Monterey reappeared, a grubby ochre splodge with pinpricks of light shimmering around its spaceport.

“The guy’s name is Rocio, Al,” Cameron said.

A square in the corner of the window turned grey, then swirled into a face. “Mr Capone,” Rocio said politely. “I’m honoured. What can I do for you?”

“I don’t like Kiera,” Al told him.

“Who does? But we’re both stuck with her.”

“You’re hurting me, Rocio. You know that’s bullshit. She’s got you by the short and curlies because she blew up all your food factories. What if I told you I might be able to rebuild one?”

“Okay, I’m interested.”

“I know you are. You’re trying to set one up yourself. That’s why you grabbed those electric gadgets the other day, right?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We got it all on film, Rocio; your guys breaking in to Monterey and driving a truckload of stuff back to you.”

“I was docked for a routine maintenance overhaul, some replacement components were fitted, so what?”

“Want me to check on that with Kiera?”

“I thought you didn’t like her.”

“I don’t, that’s why I came to you first.”

“What do you want, Mr Capone?”

“Two things. If your factory doesn’t work out, come and talk to me, okay? We can arrange much better terms than Kiera’s giving you. No rumbles, for a start. You hellhawks just keep a look out for us around New California. That long-range sight of yours is a valuable commodity. I respect that, and I’m prepared to pay you the top-dollar price for it.”

“I’ll consider the offer. What’s the other thing?”

“I want to talk to the guy who saw the murder. That was a good friend of mine got whacked. I got some questions about it for your guy.”

“Not in person. He’s useful to me, I don’t want him taken away.”

“Hell no. I know he ain’t a possessed. I just wanna talk, is all.”

“Very well.”

Al sat drinking the rest of his coffee for a minute, trying to display patience. When Jed’s sullen suspicious face finally appeared he laughed softly. “I’ll be goddamned. How old are you, kid?”

“What do you care?”

“I’m impressed, that’s why. You got balls, I’ll say that for you, kid. Waltzing straight into my headquarters and stinging me for a hundred grand’s worth of electrical garbage. That’s the kind of style I like. Ain’t many in this universe would have done that.”

“Didn’t have any choice,” Jed grunted.

“Hell, I know that. I grew up in a tough neighbourhood myself. I know how it works when you’re on the bottom of the pile. You gotta show the boss you can take the heat, right? If you can’t take it, you ain’t no use to him. You get kicked out, because there’s always some other wiseass who thinks he can do better.”

“Are you really Al Capone?”

Al ran his hands down his jacket lapel. “Check out the threads, sonny. Nobody else got my class.”

“So what do you want to talk to me for?”

“I need to know things. Now, I can’t offer you much in return. I mean, you ain’t too keen to come visit me in person. I can appreciate that, so I can’t give you no reward; dames, booze, that kind of thing. What I got plenty of is local currency. You heard about that?”

“Some kind of tokens?”

“Yeah. Tokens, backed up by my word. If I say you owe somebody something, then you have to pay. So I’ll owe you three favours. Me, Al Capone, I will personally go into debt to you. That’s bankable on any possessed planet. Now you can’t ask for stuff like world peace, or crap like that. But any service or help you need, it’s yours. Think of it as the ultimate insurance. I mean, us possessed, we’re spreading through this universe. So, you game?”

It wasn’t a smile, but the sullen scowl had gone. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

“First off, that other guy with you, the one you left behind. Is he here to kill me?”

“Gerald? Christ, no. He’s ill, real bad.” Jed brightened. “Hey, that’s my first favour. His name is Gerald Skibbow, and if you find him, I want you to bung him in a proper hospital with real doctors and stuff.”

“Okay. This is more like it, we got a dialogue here, you and me. Okay, Gerald Skibbow. If we find him, he gets good medical care. Now the other thing is, I want to know if you saw anyone else hanging around in that corridor when you found the corpse.”

“There was one bloke, yeah. I saw him through the glass in the door. Didn’t see much of him. Got a long nose. Oh, and really thick eyebrows. You know, the kind that meet over your nose.”

“Luigi,” Al growled. I should have known he’d side with Kiera. Disciplining people always sparks off a shitload of resentment. He’s going to have contacts among the fleet officers, too, a lot of contacts. She’ll love that. “Thanks kid, I still owe you a couple of favours.”

Jed gave an exaggerated nod. “Right.” His image faded out.

Al let out an infuriated breath. Partly angry at himself. He should have kept an eye on Luigi. It was this whole return setup. You couldn’t have a wiseguy whacked no more, because there was a good chance he’d come back somewhere on New California, and madder at you than when the beef started.

A wave of surprise and consternation flowed through the souls in the beyond, for once drawing Al’s attention. Something momentous was happening. Terror and awe at the event were the dominant sensations spiralling off from the relayed impression.

“What?” Al asked them. “What is it?”

Nothing like that first agonising blow against Mortonridge, thank Christ. When he concentrated on the slippery grey images fluttering from soul to soul he saw a sun with another sun erupting out of it. Space was filled with flame, and death flooded inexorably across the sky like a stormfront.

Arnstat!

“Holy Christ,” Al gasped. “Cameron? You seeing this?”

“Loud and clear. I think the hellhawks swallowed out.”

“Don’t blame them.” Organization warships were vanishing inside blossoming shells of dazzling white light.

The Confederation Navy had answered Trafalgar in a way he had never dreamed they would. Brute force on an irresistible level. His warships were helpless. Their precious antimatter useless. “Don’t they understand?” he asked the desperate souls. “Arnstat will go.”

Already flashes of joy were cutting through the beyond as a multitude of bodies were proffered for possession. The reality dysfunction around Arnstat began to strengthen as more and more possessed added themselves to its gestalt. With the Organization’s orbital weapons falling to earth in a rain of smoke there was nothing left to prevent them.

“Cameron, get me home. Fast.”

He knew what would happen. The Confederation Navy would visit New California next, its imminent arrival presenting Kiera with her main chance. This time the lieutenants and soldiers would most likely listen when she told them they should return to the planet.

A bad day getting worse.

The hostage families of the starship crew members were held on several floors of a hotel overlooking Monterey’s biosphere. During the day, they gathered together in the building’s lounges and public areas to provide each other with whatever mutual comfort they could muster. It wasn’t much. They had become a weary crowd surviving each day on shattered nerves: barely fed, denied information, ignored and despised in equal measure by their Organization guards.

Silvano and the two gangsters ushered Kingsley into the hotel’s conference suite. He saw Clarissa immediately, helping serve the morning meal. She caught sight of him and cried out, dropping her serving spatula into the pan of beans. Everybody watched as they embraced.

She was overjoyed to see him. For the first minute. Then Kingsley could stand the dishonesty no longer, and confessed what he had become. She stiffened, backing away in anguish. Wanting to block out the words, for them never to have been spoken.

“How did it happen?” she asked. “How did you die?”

“I was in a starship. There was an antimatter explosion.”

“Trafalgar?” she whispered. “Was it Trafalgar, Kingsley?”

“Yes.”

“Oh dear God. Not you. Not that.”

“I have to know something. I’m sorry I’m not asking about you—I should be, I guess—but this is the most important thing in the universe right now. Do you know where Webster is?”

She shook her head. “They keep us apart. He was assigned to the kitchen staff by that fat collaborator bastard Octavius. I used to see him every week. But it’s been over a fortnight since they brought him last. None of them will tell me anything.” She broke off at the strange smile rising on Kingsley’s face. “What is it?”

“He was telling the truth.”

“Who?”

“I was told that Webster had gotten away from the Organization, that he was on a starship. Now you tell me you haven’t seen him, and Capone can’t find him.”

“He’s free?” The knowledge overcame her reluctance, and she reached out to touch him again.

“It looks that way.”

“Who told you?”

“I don’t know. Someone very strange. Clarissa, believe me, there’s a lot more going on in this universe than we realised.”

Her smile was tragic. “I can hardly doubt my dead husband.”

“Time to go,” he said abruptly.

“Go where?”

“For you, anywhere but here. Capone owes me that, but I suspect I might have trouble trying to collect. So we’ll just take this one stage at a time.”

He walked over to the conference suite’s door, Clarissa following timidly behind him. The two gangsters lounging by the door straightened up as he approached; Silvano had disappeared, and they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.

“I’m leaving now,” Kingsley said in a smoothly reasonable tone. “Be sensible. Move aside.”

“Silvano won’t like this,” one said.

“Then he should tell me in person. It’s not your job.” He concentrated on the door, visualising it swinging open.

They tried to prevent it, focusing their own power on keeping it shut. A black magic version of arm wrestling.

Kingsley laughed as the door crashed open. He looked from one gangster to the other, eyebrow arched in mocking challenge. Unopposed, he stepped through, and took Clarissa’s hand.

Behind him, one of the gangsters picked up an ivory telephone and dialled furiously.

Gerald walked cautiously along the corridor, pausing by each door to discover if anyone was inside. It took a lot of Loren’s attention just to make sure his legs moved in a regular motion. The state of his mind had horrified his wife; thoughts disjointed, personality retarded to a childlike confusion, memories becoming fainter and difficult to recall. Only his emotions remained at their adult strength, unmollified by reason and consideration. They pummelled what was left of his rationality with the sharp peaks of extreme states. He experienced fear, never mild anxiety; shame not embarrassment.

She was constantly having to calm and soothe, offering the kind of persistent encouragement longed for by every child. Her presence was a comfort to him, he kept talking to her, a stream of consciousness drivel she found highly distracting.

He was in bad physical shape, too. The crude injuries Kiera’s goons had inflicted were easy enough to heal with energistic power. But his body remained perpetually cold, and there was a nasty sharp ache behind his temples which even energistic power couldn’t banish entirely. What he needed was a week of proper sleep, a month of good meals, and a year on a psychiatrist’s couch. It would have to wait.

They were somewhere inside the docking ledge spaceport which Kiera had taken over for herself and her fraternity. Cabal Centre. Except it was virtually deserted. Apart from the two goons she’d killed, she’d seen only three other possessed. None of them had paid her any attention, hurrying along with fraught minds to obey whatever orders they’d received. The lounges and halls were all empty.

Loren entered the main lounge, almost familiar with the bland decorations and subdued furniture. She’d seen this place often enough from the beyond. Kiera’s haunt.

Gerald’s hand ran over the woolly fabric of the couch. Marie had sat on it for hours, talking to her fellow conspirators. The coffee machine; she’d had that brought in along with fine china. It was bubbling away, filling the lounge with its aromatic scent. His eyes moved fast across the door to her bedroom. The men she’d taken in there.

Loren tried asking the souls of the beyond where she was. But the agitation and unrest created by Arnstat was snarling up their bitter cacophony even more than usual. There were some glimpses of a female shape. Possibly her. Running with a group of people along an unknown corridor.

The face was less like Marie’s than it used to be.

Loren swore viciously. To have come this far. She and Gerald enduring horrors greater than anyone knew existed. To have prevailed through all that. To be so close. Whatever omnipotent entity had designed the beyond must surely have come up with the concept of fate as well.

She could feel Gerald starting to crumple in utter dismay as the prospect of reclaiming their daughter started to recede once again. It will not happen, she promised him.

As she moved across the lounge she saw a hellhawk on its pedestal outside. Gerald’s surprise halted her as he recognised the Mindori ’s naked form. Platforms and mobile gantries were ranged up against its cargo holds, each one surrounded by bright floodlights. Maintenance crews in sleek black SII spacesuits were installing bulky equipment modules, mating their power and coolant lines to the spacecraft’s existing utility points. Though she couldn’t understand any of the activity, Loren was confident they now had an escape route when the time came. Providing that time was soon.

She left the lounge and descended one level. This was the engineering section, though none of its workforce had spent much time on internal upkeep recently. Lightpanels along the corridor roof were a feeble yellow; a few of the air ducts buzzed irritably as they blew out erratic streams of air, but most were still. The only clue it wasn’t entirely abandoned came from a near-subliminal humming thrown out by heavy machinery. Loren swivelled round trying to guess the direction, curious about what could be functioning at such a pace when nobody else was around.

When she finally located the guilty door and opened it, she emerged into a vast maintenance shop that had been converted into a cybernetic factory. Rows of industrial machinery were pounding away with furious intent, hammering, drilling, and cutting components out of raw metal. Crude conveyer belts had been set up between them, carrying the freshly minted chunks of metal to assembly tables at one end. Over two dozen non-possessed workers were employed building machine guns. They were stripped to the waist, their skin gleaming with sweat from the unfiltered heat given off by the machinery.

None of it really registered with Gerald, while Loren looked round in complete confusion. She walked over to one of the non-possessed workers.

“Hey! You. What the hell are these for?”

The man looked up in shock, then bowed his head. “They’re guns,” he grunted sullenly.

“I can see that, but what are they for?”

“Kiera.”

It was all the answer she was going to get from him. Loren picked up one of the guns, her hands slipping on the fine spray of protective oil. Neither she nor Gerald knew much about weapons outside of a didactic course they’d both taken to handle the laser hunting rifle they were allowed on the homestead. Even so, this looked strange. She watched one being put together. Its firing mechanism was too large, and the barrel was lined with some kind of composite.

Memories which belonged to neither of them foamed away behind Gerald’s eyes. Memories of mud and pain. Of dark humanoid monsters armed with blazing machine guns, advancing with deadly inexorability out of the grey rain.

Mortonridge. Kiera was building the kind of weapons the Confederation had used at Mortonridge. Against the possessed!

Loren looked round the factory again, thoroughly unnerved by what she was seeing. The production rate must run into hundreds a day. She was surrounded by non-possessed churning out the one weapon that could blast her back to the beyond in a second. If they had any ammunition.

She checked over the gun she was holding, wiping off the surplus oil with a tissue. Satisfied it was fully functional, she left the factory and started hunting for the second one. It wouldn’t be too far away.

Monterey was twenty kilometres away; Cameron’s approach made it look as though the asteroid was moving to eclipse New California. Sliding across the crescent as it expanded in the promenade deck’s big window. The flight path, coming in at ninety degrees to the rotation axis made it look as though the rock was sprouting a glittery metallic mushroom straight up. That changed as Cameron curved round above the counter-rotating spaceport, and started to slide in parallel to the spindle. The docking ledge was directly ahead, a deep circular gully chiselled into the rock, with tiny brilliant lights on one side producing wide circles of illumination on the other. Orientation shifted again as the hellhawk chased the asteroid’s rotation, turning the gully sides to a floor and ceiling. And Al finally began to understand the way centrifugal force worked.

An explosion bloomed out of the cliff-face rear of the ledge, quarter of the way round from Cameron’s position. It came from a section of rock that was clad in a big mosaic of metal and composite equipment. A broad fountain of brilliant white gas, moving sluggishly enough to be a liquid, spitting out from a jagged hole at the centre of the machinery. Tiny chunks of solid matter spun through the plume.

Al took the Havana from his mouth and crossed over to the window, pressing against it for a better look. “Holy shit. Cameron, what the hell was that? Is the Navy here already?”

“No, Al. There’s been a breach in the rock. I’m monitoring the radio, nobody’s quite sure what happened.”

“Where did it happen?” Al was straining to see if there were any hellhawks or people on the ledge near the plume.

“It’s in an industrial sector, where you were repairing that nutrient fluid refinery.”

Al slammed the palm of his hand into the window. “That bitch !” His three small scars were snow-white against a burning cheek. He stared at the plume as it slowly died down, exposing the crumpled wreckage that was peeling away from the vertical rock. “Okay, a straight fight is what she wants, that what she gets.”

“Al, I’m picking up a broadband message to the fleet. It’s Kiera.”

One of the small circular ports along the side of the observation deck shimmered over and began showing Kiera’s face. “. . . after Arnstat there can be no alternative. The Confederation Navy is coming, and with the numbers to defeat us. Unless you want to be banished back to the beyond, we have to transfer ourselves down to the planet. I have the means to do this, and the ability to maintain our authority on the surface without relying on the SD platforms and antimatter. Everything you have now, your status and position, can be continued under my patronage. And this time around you don’t have to risk yourselves on those dangerous war missions of Capone’s. His day is over. For those of you who choose to have a privileged future, get in touch with Luigi, he will be joining you in the Swabia. If you follow him to low orbit, I will provide the means to establish yourselves on the surface. Anyone who wants to stay and wait for the Navy, feel free.”

“Damnit.” Al picked up the black telephone. “Cameron, get me Silvano.”

“He’s there, boss.”

“Silvano?” Al yelled. “You hearing Kiera?”

“I hear her, boss,” the lieutenant’s voice crackled.

“Tell Emmet he’s to stop any ship that doesn’t stay where it is any way he God damn can. I’ll talk to the fleet myself later. And I want that fucking message closed down. Now! Send a bunch of our soldiers to surround her headquarters, don’t let anybody out. I’m gonna come and deal with her personally. Tonight she starts sleeping with the fish.”

“You got it.”

“I’ll be docking any minute. I want you and some of the guys there to meet me. Loyal ones, Silvano.”

“We’ll be waiting.”

Luigi arrived at the base of the docking spindle feeling pretty damn good. The waiting and plotting had been getting to him, too much like sneaking around in the dark. He was an out-in-the-open kind of guy. Kiera had insisted he keep a low profile: he was still running round after that nobody Malone down in the gym, shovelling shit for non-possessed. The times when he got out to meet his old friends flying the Organization warships were few and far between, and at the meetings all he did was drop a few words of sedition, plant the seeds of doubt.

Every time he’d go back to Kiera and assure her the fleet was losing patience with Capone. Which was so. But he hyped the figures a little, carving himself a bigger slice.

Now that didn’t matter any more. He’d walked out of Malone’s cruddy basement as soon as Arnstat registered, not even waiting for Kiera’s call. This was it, their chance. Once he was back out there with the fleet, all those numbers wouldn’t mean shit. They’d follow him again, he knew it. He’d always been good with his lieutenants, they respected him.

The big transfer chamber at the axial hub was almost deserted when he came out of the tube. He air-swam over to the doors for the commuter cabs.

A man and a woman glided across to him. It annoyed Luigi, but this wasn’t the place to make a scene. Ten minutes, ten , and he’d be back inside a starship again, in command.

“I remember you,” Kingsley Pryor said. “You were one of Capone’s lieutenants.”

“What’s it to you, pal?” Luigi snapped back. He’d never been able to live with the nudges and whispers which followed him everywhere, like he was some kind of child molester on the run.

“Nothing. Are you going out to a ship?”

“Yeah. That’s right.” Luigi looked away, maybe the dumbass would catch on.

“That’s nice,” said Kingsley. “So are we.”

The doors opened, revealing the commuter cab’s empty interior. Kingsley gestured politely. “Please, you first.”

After she showered, Jezzibella marched along the side of the bed, inspecting each of the dresses Libby had laid out. The problem was, none of them were new. She’d gone through her whole wardrobe since she hooked up with Al. I need new clothes. It had never been a problem when she was touring. Clothes were such a minuscule part of the tour budget that the company never quibbled when she bought a new range on every planet—not that she had to. Each fresh star system was colonized by hot young designers who’d kill for her to be seen just looking at their labels.

She sighed and reviewed the lineup again. It would have to be the blue and green summer dress with its wide shoulder straps and micro-skirt. Worn over the girlishly sympathetic persona.

The tiny dermal scales began to contract and expand in response to the sequence she keyed in, performing their minute adjustments to her baseline facial expression so that she appeared perpetually intrigued and trusting. Skin texture softened to a young, healthy glow. Twenty-one all over again.

Jezzibella went over to the angled mirrors on the dressing table to check herself over. The eyes weren’t right; they were too rigid, insufficiently awed and excited by the beautiful mysterious world they explored. A little piece of the tough executive persona hanging on past its sell-by date. She scowled at the offending patches; the dermal scales were degenerating again. It was always the areas around the eyes which wore out first. Her supply of replacements was none too high, either. Not even a planet could make up that shortfall; her stocks had always come straight from Tropicana, the one Adamist world with relaxed bitek laws.

“Libby,” she shouted. “Libby, get in here and bring that package with you.”

The old dear had worked wonders recently, patiently reapplying the scales with a true artisan’s touch to gloss over the reduced coverage. But even her magic couldn’t last forever without new scales. Jezzibella didn’t want to consider that.

“Libby, get your arthritic ass in here right now!”

Kiera, Hudson Proctor, and three goons stepped into the bedroom, passing straight through the door without opening it as if the clanwood panels were nothing more than coloured air. All five of them were cradling static bullet machine guns.

“Showing our age, are we?” Kiera asked silkily.

Jezzibella clamped down on her shock and budding fear. Kiera would be able to see that, and she wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. Her mind slipped directly into the cool empress persona without any help from her crashed neural nanonics. “Here for some beauty tips, Kiera?”

“This body doesn’t need any. It’s a natural. Unlike yours.”

“Pity you don’t know how to use it properly. With breasts like those I could have ruled the galaxy. All you have is twenty male morons whose hard-ons have drained the blood from their brains. You can’t inspire them, you’re just their whore. What a force not to be reckoned with that makes.”

Kiera took a step froward, her serenity cooling rapidly. “That mouth of yours has always been a problem for me.”

“Wrong again, it’s the smarter brain behind it which beats you every time.”

“Kill the slut,” Hudson Proctor barked. “We don’t have the time for this. We’ve got to find him.”

Kiera lifted her machine gun up and touched the tip of the barrel lightly against the base of Jezzibella’s neck. Watching closely for a reaction, she slid the barrel down, teasing open the thick white robe. “Oh no,” she murmured. “If we kill her, she’ll just come back as our equal. Won’t you?”

“I’d have to lower myself a long way before I reached that point.”

Kiera had to put an arm out to restrain Hudson Proctor. “Now look what you’ve done,” she chided Jezzibella. “These are my friends you’re upsetting.”

Jezzibella’s expression was of complete amusement. She didn’t even have to speak.

Kiera nodded a reluctant submission to the private sparring. She gently shifted the towelling robe back to its original state. “Where is he?”

“Oh, please. At least threaten me.”

“Very well. I will not allow you to die. And I do have that power. How’s that?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Hudson Proctor said. “Give her to me. I’ll find out where he’s gone.”

Kiera gave him a pitying glance. “Really? Will you gang bang her into capitulation, or simply keep on hitting her until she tells you?”

“Whatever it takes.”

“Tell him,” Kiera said.

“If I thought you could win, I would have joined you at the start,” Jezzibella said simply. “You can’t, so I didn’t.”

“The game has changed,” Kiera said. “The Confederation Navy has destroyed our ships at Arnstat. They’re coming here. New California has to leave, with us on it. And the only thing stopping that is Capone.”

“Life’s a bitch, death’s a tragedy, then you meet me.”

“One of your better lyrics. Too bad you won’t be remembered for it.”

The processor block Jezzibella had left on the dressing table began to shrill an alarm.

“Right on time,” Kiera said. “That’ll be my team dealing with Capone’s refinery. I’m covering my back in case he subverts any of my hellhawks. Not that I actually have to blast him back into the beyond in person. One of my sympathisers has already been given that job. But I was so looking forward to being there. So once again, you’ve spoilt my fun.” She held a finger up. A long yellow flame flared from the tip, dancing in front of Jezzibella’s stoic face. “Let’s see if I was wrong about being unable to force you, shall we? After all this effort I think I deserve some kind of payoff.” The flame turned blue, shrinking until it was a small fiercely hot jet.

Life in Emmet Mordden’s office had suddenly become very hectic. One set of screens was covering the explosion in the nutrient fluid refinery, providing images from surviving cameras and sensors along with a general schematic of the section. Whoever placed the bomb knew what they were doing. It had taken out a huge segment of the outer wall, crumpling the internal machinery and cutting power and data cables. Depressurisation had damaged the refinery still further, rupturing pipes and synthesiser modules. At least there were no fires, the vacuum made sure of that.

Emmet was busy coordinating with the project manager, trying to ensure that everyone who’d withstood the blast was safe behind pressure doors or in emergency igloos, as well as doing a body count. Medical teams were on their way.

The SD sensor grid was splashed across the largest screen, with a full tactical overlay. It showed the long range sensor focus sweeping the high-orbit vectors which the hellhawks were supposed to be patrolling. Six were missing. The scans had also revealed two voidhawks swallowing in to take advantage of the gaps.

His analysis of the virus in Bernhard’s block was still running, filling one holographic screen with cubist alphanumerics. He didn’t even have time to suspend that.

Several questors from his desktop block were running through the asteroid’s memory cores, hunting down references on Tyrathca military history and the Orion Nebula. Al had wanted to read up on them. So far they’d produced very few files. All of them on the soldier caste. None of which he’d accessed.

Kiera’s face was smiling complacently out of another, her refined voice booming round the room, telling the fleet that they should turn their backs on Capone and emigrate down to the planet with her. The screen next to her was flipping through the asteroid’s communication circuits, running a program to track down which antenna she was using and where her input entered the network.

The SD sensor network flashed up a priority-one alert. The Swabia had disengaged from its docking bay cradle and initiated a jump immediately. The assholes hadn’t even cleared the rim!

His desktop block bleeped urgently. “What?” Emmet yelled.

“Emmet, this is Silvano. I’ve got a message from the boss.”

“I’m a little busy right now.” He squinted at the display of the communication circuits. Sections were dropping out. Viral warnings started to appear.

“Get in to the control centre and make sure the fleet stays on duty. Anyone starts heading for the surface, nuke the fuckers with the SD weapons. Got that?”

“But . . .”

“Now, you pissant little mother.” The block went dead. Emmet snarled at it, the closest he’d ever come to showing disrespect to Al’s chilling enforcer. He took the time to load a couple of orders in the desktop to run a virus scan through the office hardware, and went out at a run.

The thick door to the control centre slid open. Jagged lines of white fire ripped through the air centimetres in front of Emmet. Alarms were screaming as red strobes burned down his optic nerves. Layers of smoke lashed out down the corridor. He squealed in panic and dived behind one of the consoles as he hardened a bubble of air around himself. Two fireballs burst open against its boundary. Instinctively he sent white fire of his own back along the direction they’d come from. It sizzled sharply in the torrent of purple retardant foam spraying out of the ceiling nozzles.

“What the fuck is going on?” he yelled. He could sense two distinct groupings of minds in the control centre, clustered at opposite ends of the chamber. Most of the consoles between them were smothered with foam that seethed and writhed as it absorbed the flames licking up from smoking puncture holes.

“Emmet, that you? Kiera’s bastards tried to shut down the SD network. We stopped them. Snuffed one.”

Despite the lethal environment, Emmet lifted one arm away from his head to glance round again. Stopped what? he thought incredulously. The centre was a total wreck.

“Emmet!” Jull von Holger called. “Emmet, tell your guys to pack it in. We’ve won and you know it. The Navy’s coming and it’s not taking prisoners. We have to get down the planet.”

“Oh shit,” Emmet whispered.

“Emmet, help us,” Capone’s faction called. “We can whip their asses.”

“Put a stop to it, Emmet,” Jull called. “Come with us. Be safe.”

The white fire was slashing faster, its brightness building. Emmet curled up tighter, trying to shut it all out.

The gleaming scarlet rocketship edged slowly over the docking ledge, creeping up to the pedestal positioned only sixty metres from the vertical wall of rock. It settled smoothly, and a metallic airlock tube telescoped away from the cliff face to search out the hellhawk’s hatch. They engaged and sealed.

Al Capone stomped along the tube into the reception lounge, a baseball bat gripped firmly in his right hand. His lieutenants were waiting for him, Silvano and Patricia grim-faced but obviously spoiling for a fight. Leroy at their side, anxious and desperate to prove his loyalty. A semicircle of over a dozen more behind them, equally committed, dressed in their best pinstripe suits, Thompson machine guns gleaming and ready.

Al nodded round, pleased with what he saw. He would have preferred old friends, but these would do. “Okay, we all know what Kiera wants. The dame’s running scared of the Navy and that Ruski admiral. Well, now we’ve seen what those bastards will do when their back’s to the wall, I say that makes it more important than ever to stay here and cover our asses. We’ve still got antimatter, and lots of it. That means we got clout where it hurts, we can make them the offer. Unless the Feds agree to stop dicking around with us, every planet they got’s gonna live in fear from now on. That’s the only way to be sure. I’ve lived with being wanted all my life, and I know how to deal with that kind of bullshit. You never, fucking ever, let your guard down. You gotta make like you’re the meanest SOB on the street to stop them messing with you. If they don’t respect you, they don’t fear you.” He slapped the top of the baseball bat against his left palm. “Kiera needs to be told that in person.”

“We’re with you, Al,” someone called.

The semicircle of gangsters parted, and Al strode forward. “Silvano, we know where she is?”

“I think she went to the hotel, Al. We can’t get them on the phone. Mickey’s gone back there to take a look. He’ll call if he finds her.”

“What about Jez?”

Silvano shot Leroy a glance. “We think she’s still there, Al. Couple of the guys are there with her. She’ll be fine.”

“Better be,” Al muttered. He looked ahead to see Avram Harwood III standing in the lounge’s doorway. The man was a total tow truck job. Breathing badly, his unhealed wounds leaking cheesy fluid down pale damp skin; he could barely stand.

“I am the mayor,” Avram wheezed. “I am entitled to respect. That’s your big thing, isn’t it, respect.” He giggled.

“Avvy, get the fuck out of my way,” Al snapped.

“Kiera showed me respect.” Avram raised his static bullet machine gun. “Now it’s your turn.” The weapon’s fire rate control was set at maximum. He pulled the trigger.

Al was already jumping out of the way. Silvano was raising his own Thompson. Leroy brought his arms up, yelling a frantic: “No!” at the top of his lungs. The other gangsters were diving to the floor or aiming at Avram.

Electrically charged bullets tore across the lounge, a devastating line of throbbing blue-white light complementing the dragon’s roar. Al hit the floor just as the first possessed body ignited in its unique spectacular fashion. The searing glare wiped out everyone’s vision. A shockwave of heat washed over them, blistering exposed skin, singeing hair. Another body ignited.

Al screamed in raw fury, flinging a white firebolt as strong as the internecine furnace of flesh. Eight identical streamers of white fire smashed into Avram Harwood’s body, vaporizing his torso instantly amid a bloom of ash and blood steam. Arms that had been held outstretched dropped to the melting carpet next to his collapsing legs. Heat detonated every chemical bullet left in the machine gun’s magazine as it fell, sending out a lethal volley of shrapnel to slash walls and flesh.

When the light, heat, and noise shrank away, Al swayed to his feet. All he could see at first was a giant purple afterimage which his energistic power was incapable of banishing. His weird psychic sense couldn’t track down Avram Harwood’s thoughts anywhere. As he blinked the blotches away from his eyes, he realized how badly parts of him were hurting. His suit and hands were running with blood from half a dozen wounds where the shrapnel had sliced into him. One by one he made the slivers of hot metal slide up out of his body and closed the lips on each cut, bonding the skin back together. The pain dwindled away.

Leroy was lying on the floor at Al’s feet. Bullets had torn their way across him, the last one removing half of his throat. Dead eyes stared upwards. Al switched his gaze to the two piles of charcoal scattered over the molten composite floor tiling. “Who?” he demanded.

The gangsters were picking themselves up, healing and sealing their shrapnel wounds. A head count told Al that Silvano had been among the victims of the static bullets. Nobody dared say anything as Al stood over the small black pile of cooling ash that used to be his chief enforcer. His head was bowed as if in prayer. After a minute he walked over to the four battered limbs that remained of Avram Harwood. “Bastard!” Al screamed. He brought his baseball bat crashing down on an arm. “Motherfucking!” The bat slammed into the arm again. “Shit eating!” This time he hit a leg. “Psycho bastard!” The other leg. “I’ll kill your family. I’ll burn your house to the ground. I’ll dig up your mother’s coffin and shit on her. You wanted respect? That what you wanted? This is the kind of respect I got for a cornholing son of a bitch like you.” The bat pounded and pounded on the limbs, pulping them to roadkill smears.

Patricia stepped forward from the rank of badly alarmed gangsters. “Al. Al, that’s enough.”

The bat was brought up, ready to fly at her head. Al met her level gaze, stood for a moment with the bat poised. A long breath shuddered out of him. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go find Kiera.”

The floor under Emmet was melting, transmuting into a puddle of cold liquid rock. It would soon be deep enough to swallow him whole. Somebody was becoming very anxious to turn him into a fossil. He strove hard to turn the rock solid again as the air above him raged with white fire and profanities. The two factions were evenly matched, and both of them kept shouting at him to throw his strength in on their side.

He wanted to help Al’s guys. His own side. Really wanted to. Except the idea of going with New California into a place of safety was hugely appealing. No more of this shit, for a start.

A voracious spout of white fire hit the console he was crouched behind, and started chewing its way through the composite casing and tightly packed circuitry cubes inside. Kiera’s people obviously had decided he wasn’t joining them.

Retardant foam gushed downwards, only to be catalysed into boiling green treacle by the unnatural blaze. It poured off the top of the console and splattered over Emmet, stinging his exposed skin. He drew a deep breath, praying his bladder would hold out, and conjured up a spear of white fire. It flashed across the chamber towards Jull von Holger and his cohorts. The immediate result wasn’t quite what he expected.

A thunderous roar swamped the control centre. A possessed body ignited, forcing Emmet to clamp his hand over his eyes. The mental and vocal shriek of the vanquished soul grated down his skin like needles of ice. A second body erupted, then another. The air was clogged with stifling heat and a vomitous stench of incinerated meat as they belched out thick fumes.

After a long time the bodies burnt out, returning the light level to normal. The awful fetor remained. The roaring had stopped.

A loud metallic snik sounded across the chamber. To Emmet’s ears it sounded mechanical, and very weapons orientated. Footsteps squelched through the foam.

“You’ve pissed yourself,” a voice told him.

Emmet twisted his head out of the foetal position. A gaunt man in a grubby one-piece suit was looking down at him, holding a peculiar machine gun, its warm barrel pointing directly at Emmet’s forehead. A canvas satchel was slung over his shoulder, packed full of magazines.

“I was scared,” Emmet said. “I’m not part of the Organization’s muscle.”

The man’s features vanished for a second, replaced by a woman’s. If anything, her expression was even more forbidding. Emmet could sense the energistic power circulating through the body. It rivalled Al’s strength.

Survivors from the Organization faction were peering nervously over the top of their trashed consoles.

“Who are you?” Emmet stammered.

“We are the Skibbows.”

“Uh, right. Are you on Kiera’s side?”

“No. But we’d really like to know where she is.” The machine gun’s safety catch was released. “Now, please.”

Mickey Pileggi had learned the hard way not to try and storm Kiera and her goons. Three of his soldiers had wound up burning like miniature suns when they all charged into the Nixon suite. Mickey had entertained visions of lavish praise and unlimited privileges heaped upon him by Al for rescuing Jezzibella from Kiera’s hands. That dream had quickly turned into a crock of shit. The guns she was armed with had caused havoc amongst the gangsters. Those screams would echo through the air around Mickey for eternity.

He’d ordered them to fall back to the hallway outside, taking up shielded positions in the twin stairwells and disabling the elevators with strategic blasts of white fire. They were at the bottom of the tower. She wasn’t going anywhere. Now he just had to explain to Al how he’d fouled up.

Another spray of static bullets hammered out from the splintered doors of the Nixon suite. All the gangsters ducked, thickening the local air.

“We should seal this floor off,” one of them said. “Blow the windows out and see how she likes eating vacuum.”

“Great idea,” Mickey grumbled. “Are you gonna tell Al we did to Jezzibella what they did to Brown-nose Bernhard?”

“Guess not.”

“Okay. Now come on, guys. Let’s concentrate on making those doors evaporate. Keep them occupied defending themselves while our reinforcements arrive.”

“If any do.”

Mickey shot the man a furious glare. “Nobody’s deserting Al, not after what he’s done for us.”

“For you.”

Mickey didn’t see who said that, but let the sharp anger show amid his thoughts as a warning. He focused on the door, and punched it with the force of his mind. Bullets pulverised a line in the marble wall above his head. Tiny tendrils of electricity scrabbled across the surface. Everyone flinched down fast.

His processor block bleeped. He dusted hot marble chips from his hair and pulled it out of his pocket, amazed the thing was working with so much machismo energistic power buzzing about.

“Mickey?” Emmet implored. “Mickey, you got any idea where Kiera is?”

“Pretty sure, yeah. She’s like ten yards away from me.” Mickey gave the block an infuriated look as Emmet abruptly cut the call. “Okay guys, let’s hit the doors together this time. On three. One. Two—”

The office door shut behind Skibbow, and Emmet let out a huge gasp of relief. There was a real monster of a problem torturing that wacko possessed, and Emmet was enormously glad he didn’t share any part of it. He let his body calm for a few precious moments more, then called Al.

“Whatcha got for me, Emmet?”

“We had a problem in the SD control centre, Al. Kiera’s people tried to knock out the orbital platforms.”

“And?”

“They’re sleeping with the fish.” He held his breath, worried Al could sense half-truths along the communication circuit.

“I owe you one, Emmet. I won’t forget what you did.”

Emmet’s fingers were skidding fast over his desktop keyboard, re-routing the SD network’s main command channels. Symbols blinked up on the tactical display, showing him what he was in charge of. He smiled uneasily at the power he’d assumed. Lord of the sky, admiral of the fleet, enforcer of order across a whole planet. “The place is pretty much a bombsite, Al, but I’ve still got control of the major hardware.”

“What’s the fleet doing, Emmet? Are the guys staying put?”

“Pretty much. Eight frigates are heading down to low orbit, I guess the rest are waiting to hear what you’ve got to say. But Al, I count seventeen hellhawks missing.”

“Je-zus, Emmet, first chunk of good news I’ve had today. You keep watching everybody, make sure they don’t move. I got some business to clear up, then I’ll be right back with you.”

“Sure thing, Al.” He blinked, and squinted at the tactical display. It wasn’t supposed to be shown on such a small scale; this was a format designed to showcase across a hundred metre screen in front of admirals and defence chiefs. From what he could make out, two miniaturised symbols were moving very close to Monterey itself.

The Varrad skimmed above the wrinkled rock, keeping a constant fifty-metre separation from the pumice-like terrain, lifting and sinking in perfect curving parallels with the craters and ridges beneath its metallic lower hull. Pran Soo was pursuing the Hilton tower as it slid across the stars, closing on it like an atmospheric fighter on a low-visibility strike run. Along with all the other hellhawks, she’d been monitoring what communications she could access since Kiera’s revolt had started. And Mickey Pileggi had spent fifteen minutes yelling across the net at his fellow Organization lieutenants for help to deal with Kiera and her dangerous weapons.

Are you sure about this?rocio asked.

Absolutely. We know a possessed body is incapable of defending itself against a starship weapon. The power level is simply too great, even if they know they’re being targeted. I can eliminate Kiera with one shot, and this time there will be no comeback from the Organization. We will truly be free.

Capone’s girlfriend is in that hotel suite.

He will find another. We will never have an opportunity like this again.

Very well, but try to keep the destruction to a minimum. We may yet have to cut a deal with the Organization.

Not if the Confederation Navy gets here first.

Let me see what’s happening. The rock is blocking my distortion field.

Pran Soo opened her affinity, allowing him to borrow the sights revealed to her bitek sensor blisters, showing him the rock rushing past her hull. Her other principal sense, the Varrad ’s distortion field, was reduced to a hemispherical shape, its usual bloated coverage curtailed by the giant asteroid.

The Monterey Hilton swung towards her, sticking out proud from the rock. Visually, a pillar of tough carbon-reinforced titanium riddled with thick, multi-layered windows. Inside the distortion field it emerged as a coagulation of thin sheets of matter, threaded with a filigree of minute power cables whose electrons were imbued with a delicate spectral sheen.

She matched her vector with the asteroid’s rotation. Electronic pods on her hull flowered, thrusting out sensors. They swept across the lower floors of the tower.

I can’t distinguish individual people,she told rocio. The window’s radiation shielding is an effective block against precision scanning. I am aware of their emotions, but from this distance they’ve blurred together. All I know is, several people are definitely in there.

And Mickey Pileggi is still calling for assistance. Kiera must be one of those you sense.

Pran Soo activated a microwave laser, and aligned it on the base of the Hilton. The beam would slice along the side of the tower, filleting the structural girders so the entire bottom floor would tumble away into interplanetary space. Targeting systems designated the requisite cutting pattern.

A hellhawk rose above the asteroid’s flat horizon behind Pran Soo, its hull crawling with vivid lines of electrical energy feeding a comprehensive armament of beam weapons.

Etchells,pran soo exclaimed in surprise.

Two masers punctured her thick polyp hull, penetrating right into the central core of organs.

Emmet finally managed to shift the tactical display’s magnification, enhancing the zone around Monterey itself. He was just in time to watch one of the symbols drift away from the Hilton tower. The other symbol moved in closer to the hotel. Its data tag identifying it as the Stryla, which he knew was possessed by Etchells. But he didn’t have a clue whose side it was on, even if the hellhawks were taking sides.

He activated the close-range defence systems and ordered them to target the hellhawk. The only option, given SD’s hellhawk liaison guy was now a mound of ash in the ruined control centre. Etchells was an unknown factor, capable of killing possessed humans. And Al was heading down into the Hilton.

Stryla ’s symbol sprouted a small batch of alphanumerics, telling Emmet it was datavising directly to the asteroid’s SD command. He hunted round his program menus, desperately trying to route the message through to his office.

“Disengage your targeting lock,” Etchells said.

“No way,” Emmet told him. “I want you a thousand kilometres away from this asteroid; you have thirty seconds to begin accelerating or I’ll fire.”

“Listen, bollockbrain. I have fifty combat wasps in my launch cradles, all with innumerable submunitions, all fitted with fusion warheads. Right now, they are all armed, and activated by a deadman code. You cannot train enough beam weapons on me to vaporise me and the missiles instantaneously. If you fire, they will detonate. I’m not sure if that much megatonnage will crack Monterey open or not. Would you like to find out?”

Emmet’s hands clamped round his head in an agony of frustration. I am not cut out for any of this shit. I want to go home.

What would Al do? It wasn’t such a good question. He had the horrible feeling that if you put Al in a Mexican stand-off he would shoot.

“You know, I might just,” he said stubbornly. “I’ve had a real shitty time today, and the Confederation Navy is on the way to make it worse.”

“I know the feeling,” Etchells said. “But I’m really not a threat to you.”

“Then what the hell are you doing there?”

“I have to ask someone a question. Once I’ve done that, I’ll leave. Give me five minutes, then you can start acting tough again. Deal?”

The expensive designer gloss had departed from the lounge in the Nixon suite. Mickey’s ill-judged attempt to beachhead the place had resulted in streamers of white fire slashing round in chaotic violence, and Kiera’s counter-attack had only made it worse. The lights were out, a tangle of broken pipes and cables hung down out of the ceiling, the furniture had burned enthusiastically and was now reduced to smoking embers. Torrents of energistic power poured upon the doors by both sides had turned them and the surrounding walls into a fantastic tract of heterogeneous crystal; long encrustations of quartz sprouted in jumbled antagonism, each branch fighting its neighbour like a forest of avaricious jewels. They writhed fluidly each time another burst of power doused them, growing slightly longer and more entwined.

Kiera worried that the continual assaults on the door were a diversion. She had two of her goons patrolling the other rooms, searching for the Organization gangsters grouping together on the other side of the suite’s walls and especially the ceiling. So far they hadn’t tried to break through, but it would be only a matter of time. Nobody was stupid enough to keep on trying the same route in when they were so thoroughly blocked. There was also the ammunition question. She was going to run out eventually.

One thing she’d made quite sure of was keeping in contact with her deputies. Hudson Proctor could use his affinity to talk to the remaining Valisk survivors positioned through the asteroid, who in turn kept in touch with their recruits through the net. Communications remained the key to any revolution.

Unfortunately, it didn’t guarantee success.

“Just how many people have declared for us?” Kiera asked.

Hudson Proctor took the figures he knew of, and added quite a few. No way was he about to deliver that much bad news by himself. “About a thousand in the asteroid.”

“What about the fleet?” she demanded. “How many ships?”

“Jull reported several dozen were heading for low orbit before Emmet’s crew wiped him out. But they wrecked the SD centre. Capone can’t use the platforms to intimidate anybody, in space or on the planet.”

“Where the hell is Luigi?”

“I don’t know, he hasn’t checked in.”

“Damn it, didn’t anyone listen to me? Luigi’s part was crucial, the fleet must follow us down to the planet. Capone is going to get us all slung back into the beyond.”

Hudson had heard the speech countless times already. He said nothing.

“I should have gone for the control centre, not Capone,” Kiera said. She looked at the crystalline bulwark, which undulated rapidly, twinkling with emerald light. One of her goons fired his machine gun through a gap where the doors used to be. “Maybe we should try and get up to the defence section, there’s bound to be an auxiliary control room.”

“We’ll never get past Pileggi,” Hudson said. “There’s too many of them.”

“Only if we make a break for it through the front.” Kiera tilted her head up to stare at the ceiling. “I’ll bet we can . . .” She trailed off as a silver-white starship with glowing engine nacelles rose ponderously into view outside the big window wall.

“Oh shit,” Hudson murmured. “That’s the Varrad. And Pran Soo is not your biggest fan.”

“Talk to her, find out what she wants.”

He licked his lips and began a frown which never really had time to form. “I can’t—oh.”

The hellhawk’s fantasy image burst. It dropped out of sight, rolling as it went. Another one glided up to replace it, a dark bird-shape with red-flecked reptile scales. Hudson grinned in relief. “Etchells.”

“Ask him if he can hit Pileggi with his lasers.”

“Right.” Hudson concentrated. “Uh, he says he has a question for you.”

Kiera’s processor block bleeped. Not taking her eyes off Hudson, she slipped it out of her jacket pocket. “Yes?”

“I need to know something,” Etchells said. “Do you believe the Navy mission to the Orion Nebula is a danger to us?”

“Of course I do, that’s why you and the others have been refitted with auxiliary fusion generators. It has to be investigated.”

“We agree on that, then.”

“Good. Now target the Organization grunts holding me in here, and I’ll eliminate Capone. With him out of the way I can assign antimatter warships to the flight. The threat can be dealt with properly.”

“Twenty-seven voidhawks have swallowed away from their patrol orbits without clearance. That means they have found an alternative source of nutrient fluid. Even if you gain control of the Organization, you will lose them.”

“But gain control of the antimatter.”

“The Confederation Navy is coming. Every orbital facility the planet has will be obliterated in their attack. Your strategy was to take New California out of the universe to a place of safety.”

“Yes?” she asked irritably. “So?”

“How do you propose to maintain the blackmail threat over the crews of the ships you dispatch to the nebula?”

Kiera turned from Hudson Proctor to look directly at the hellhawk on the other side of the window. “We’ll come up with something.”

“Your rebellion has failed. Capone is on his way with enough gangsters to overwhelm you.”

“Fuck you.”

“I sincerely believe the Navy mission is a threat to my continued existence in this form. That must be prevented. I intend to fly to Mastrit-PJ, and I’m offering you the chance to escape with me.”

“Why?”

“You have the arming codes for the combat wasps I have been loaded with. Admittedly they are only fusion warheads, but I will take you off the asteroid if you make those codes available to me.”

Kiera scanned round the ruined lounge. The machine guns opened fire again with a thunderclap tattoo. Sapphire light flexed hungrily within the crystals, causing them to expand further into the lounge. “Very well.”

The hellhawk surged forwards, its neck flattening out. Energistic power cloaked its hooked beak with a lambent red glow. The lounge’s window rippled as the tip pressed against it, then parted like water to allow the vast creature’s head into the lounge. A huge iris swivelled round to fix on Kiera. The beak parted to reveal an airlock hatch inside.

“Welcome aboard,” Etchells said.

Al ran down the last flight of stairs to find Mickey standing at the bottom. The lieutenant took a terrified step backwards.

“Al, please, I did everything I could. I swear it.” He crossed himself elaborately. “On my mother’s life, we tried to get Jez out of there. Three of the guys got whacked just stepping through the door. Those bullets are too much. They kill you, Al, kill you dead.”

“Shut the fuck up, Mickey.”

“Sure, Al, sure thing. Absolutely. I’m dumb. From now on. Definitely.”

Al peered across the hallway. Bullets had shredded the composite wall panelling, even hacking their way into the metal behind. Opposite him, the Nixon suite’s doors glinted prismatically in the light emerging from the two surviving ceiling panels.

“Where’s Kiera, Mickey?”

“She was in there, Al. I swear.”

“Was?”

“They stopped firing a couple of minutes ago. We can sense some of them still.”

Al tapped his baseball bat on the floor, contemplating the Nixon suite. “Hey,” he shouted. “You in there. I brought a whole truckload of my guys with me, and any minute now we’re gonna march right in and beat seven types of crap out of you. Your shooters ain’t gonna be no good against this many of us. But if you come out right now, then you got my word that you don’t get your balls screwed into the nearest light socket. This is between me and Kiera now. Walk away.”

The baseball bat tapped out a metronome beat on the ground. A figure moved behind the crystalline sheet with slow caution.

“Mickey?” Al asked. “Why didn’t you just jump the bastards through the ceiling?”

Mickey’s shoulders wriggled awkwardly under his double-breasted suit. “The ceiling?”

“Never mind.”

“I’m coming out,” Hudson Proctor called. He stepped through the gap in the crystal; his arm was outstretched, holding the machine gun by its strap.

Thirty Thompson sub-machine guns were lined up on him, most of them silver-plated. He closed his eyes and waited for the shots, Adam’s apple bobbing quickly.

Al couldn’t quite figure the spark of outrage glimmering in the man’s mind. Fear, yes, plenty of it. But Hudson Proctor was indignant about something.

“Where is she?” Al asked.

Hudson tilted over from his waist, allowing the machine gun to rest on the floor before letting go of the strap. “Gone,” he said. “A hellhawk took her off.” He paused, real anger heating his expression. “Just her. I was climbing in behind her and she shoved a fucking gun in my face. That bitch; there was room for all of us on board—she just left us behind. Didn’t give a fuck about us. I made everything happen for her, you know. Without me she would never have kept control of the hellhawks. I was the one who kept them in line.”

“Why did a hellhawk take her off?” Al asked. “She ain’t got nothing over them any more.”

“It’s Etchells, the Stryla , he’s obsessed about what kind of weapon the Tyrathca have on the other side of the Orion Nebula. He took her with him so she could fire the combat wasps. They’ll probably start the first inter-species war. Both of them are crazy enough.”

“Women, huh?” Al gave him a friendly grin.

Hudson’s face twitched. “Yeah. Women. Fuck ’em.”

“All they’re good for.” Al laughed.

“Yeah, right.”

The baseball bat caught Hudson square on the crown of his head, smashing through the bone to cleave the brain in two. Blood splashed down the front of Al’s sharply cut suit, splattering on his patent leather shoes. “And just look at the shit they get you into,” he told the collapsing corpse.

Thirty streamers of white fire stabbed out in unison, vaporizing the crystal wall and decimating the possessed cowering behind it.

Libby’s cries brought them to the bedroom. Everyone hung back as Al went through the door into the darkened room. Libby was kneeling on the floor, cradling a figure in a stained towelling robe. Her thin voice was a constant piteous wail, like some animal braying for its dead mate. She rocked softly backwards and forwards, dabbing at Jezzibella’s face. Al moved forwards, fearing the worst. But Jezzibella’s thoughts were still present, still flowing through her own brain.

Libby turned her head to face him, tears glinting down her cheeks. “Look what they did,” she whimpered. “Look at my poppet, my beautiful beautiful poppet. Devils, devils all of you. That’s why you were sent to the beyond. You’re devils.” Her shoulders trembled as she slowly curled herself around Jezzibella, cuddling her fiercely.

“It’s okay,” Al said. His mouth was dry and he bent down beside the stricken old woman. In his whole life he’d never been so scared for what he would see.

“Al?” Jezzibella gasped. “Al, is that you?”

Scorched, empty eye sockets searched round for him. He gripped her hand, feeling the black skin crack open under his fingers. “Sure, baby, I’m here,” his faint voice faded as his throat closed up. He wanted to join Libby and put his head back and scream.

“I didn’t tell her,” Jezzibella said. “She wanted to know where you were, but I never said.”

Al was sobbing. Like it mattered if Kiera had found out, everyone who counted had stayed loyal in the end. But Jez hadn’t known that. Had done what she thought was needed. For him.

“You’re an angel,” he bawled. “A goddamn fucking angel sent down from heaven to show me what a worthless piece of shit I am.”

“No,” she cooed. “No, Al.”

He traced his fingers over the remnants of her precious face. “I’ll make you better,” he promised. “You’ll see. Every doctor on this crappy little world is gonna come up here and cure you. I’m gonna make them. And you’ll get well again. I’ll be here right beside you the whole time. And I’m gonna take care of you from now on. Good care. You’ll see. No more of this hurting and fighting. Never again. You’re all that matters to me. You’re everything, Jez. Everything.”

Mickey hung around at the back of the crowd shuffling about in the Nixon suite when the two terrified-looking non-possessed doctors arrived. He reckoned that was the smart thing. Be there, show off your loyalty like a medal, but don’t get into direct line of sight. Not at a time like this. He knew the boss well enough by now. Somebody was going to pay very hard for what was going down. Very hard indeed. The asteroid was rotten with rumours about how the Confederation had learned how to torture a possessed for months. If anybody could improve on that, it would be the Organization, with Patricia as chief researcher.

A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Mickey’s nerves were so shot they fired his leg muscles to jump. The hand prevented any actual movement, holding him fast with abnormal strength. “What is this?” he squawked with fake indignation. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“I don’t care who you are,” Gerald Skibbow said. “Tell me where Kiera is.”

Mickey tried to size up his . . . well, not assailant, exactly—questioner. Unnervingly powerful, and zero sense of humour. Not a good combination. “The bitch showed us a clean pair of heels. A hellhawk took her off. Now let me have my shoulder back, man. Jesus!”

“Where did it take her?”

“Where did . . . Oh, like you’re going after them?” Mickey sneered.

“Yes.”

Mickey didn’t like the way this was speedballing downhill. He dropped the sarcasm approach. “The Orion Nebula, okay. Can I go now, thank you.”

“Why would she go there?”

“What is it to you, pal?” a voice asked.

Gerald let go of Mickey and turned to face Al Capone. “Kiera is possessing our daughter. We want her back.”

Al nodded thoughtfully. “You and I need to talk.”

Rocio watched the taxi roll across the docking ledge towards him. Its elephant trunk airlock tube lifted up and fastened onto his hatch.

“We’ve got a visitor,” he announced to Beth and Jed.

Both of them hurried along the main corridor to the airlock. The hatch was already open, framing a familiar figure. “Bugger me,” she grunted. “Gerald!”

He smiled wearily at her. “Hello. I brought some decent grub. Figured I owe you that much.” There was a huge pile of boxes on the floor of the taxi behind him.

“What happened, mate?” Jed asked. He was peering round the old loon, trying to read the labels.

“I rescued my husband.” Loren manifested her own face over Gerald’s, and smiled at the two youngsters. “I must thank you for taking care of him. God knows it’s not easy at the best of times.”

“Rocio!” Beth yelled.

A shocked Jed was stumbling backwards. “He’s possessed! Run!”

Rocio’s face appeared in one of the brass-rimmed portholes. “It’s all right,” he assured them. “I cut a deal with Al Capone. We’re taking the Skibbows with us, and tracking down my murderous old friend Etchells. In return, the Organization supplies the hellhawks with every technical assistance they need securing Almaden, and then leaves them alone.”

Beth gave Gerald a nervous glance, not at all trustful, no matter who was possessing him. “Where are we going?” she asked Rocio.

“The Orion Nebula. To start with.”