Jezzibella morphed into her hero-worshipping early-teens persona.
“Covering for Al?” her high girlish voice piped.
“Yes. Who else?”
“Come on, Jez,” Al grinned in mock-rebuke. “There ain’t no one else in the market for hellhawks, you know that.”
“I do.” Jezzibella looked up adoringly at him, and sighed.
“And without me, there’s no reason for New California to keep supporting them,” Al said.
Kiera’s attention moved back from Emmet. “Believe me, I’m very aware of everyone’s position. And their worth.”
“That’s nice,” Jezzibella said blandly.
“Enjoy your drink, babe,” Al said, and patted Kiera’s arm. “I got a small announcement to make before we sit down to eat.” He marched over to Emmet, and signalled the head waiter to bang a gong. The room fell silent, people picking up on the focused excitement in Al’s mind. “This ain’t the usual kind of speech to make at table. I ain’t got no stag jokes, for a start.”
Faithful smiles switched on all around. Al took another sip of champagne—damn, but he wanted a shot of decent bourbon. “All right, I ain’t gonna bullshit around with you. We got problems with the fleet, on account of it ain’t got nowhere to go. You know how it is, we gotta keep momentum going or the boys’ll go sour on us. That right, Silvano?”
The brooding lieutenant nodded scrupulously. “Some of the guys are getting close to the boil, sure, Al. Nothing we can’t keep a lid on.”
“I don’t wanna keep no fucking lid on nothing. We gotta give the bastards something to do while we build up stocks of antimatter. We can’t take over no planet again, not for a while. So we’re gonna hit the Confederation from another angle. That’s what I got for you, something new. This way we cause them one fuck of a lot of damage, and don’t get hurt ourselves. And we got Emmet here to thank for that.” He put his arm round the Organization’s reluctant technology expert, and gave him a friendly hug. “We’re gonna launch some raids on other planets, and break through their space fort defences. Once we’ve done that, we can sling a whole load of our guys down to the surface. Tell them, Emmet.”
“I’ve done some preliminary designs for one-man atmospheric entry pods,” Emmet said in a tense voice. “They’re based on standard escape boats, but they can descend in under fifteen minutes. That’s high gees for whoever’s inside, but with our energistic strength it shouldn’t be a problem. And they’re simple enough, that we shouldn’t screw up the guidance electronics. All the fleet has to do is create a window in the SD coverage long enough for them to get down. Once they’re on the ground, the good old exponential curve comes into play.”
“Without the fleet firepower to back them up, they’ll lose,” Dwight said bluntly. “The local cops will wipe them out.”
“It depends on how together the planet is, and how many soldiers we can shove down there,” Al said, untroubled. “Emmet’s right about how fast we can expand. That’s gonna cause the governments a shitload of grief.”
“But, Al, the Organization can’t expand as fast as ordinary possessed. We’ve got to have time to let Harwood and his guys vet the souls that’re coming back. Christ, we’ve had enough trouble with loyalty on New California, let alone Arnstadt. If we don’t have committed lieutenants, the Organization’ll fall apart.”
“Who gives a shit?” Al laughed round at the startled expressions. “Come on, you guys! Just how many goddamn planets do you think we can run? Even the King of Kulu’s only got half a dozen. If I gave all you dopeheads one apiece to be emperor of, that still leaves hundreds of free ones left out there to screw with us. We gotta start levelling the odds, here. I say shoot possessed down to the surface and let the fuckers run loose. We can use all our hotheads from here, all the crap artists who wanna take New California out of the universe, send them, get rid of the assholes permanently. That way we’re solving two problems at once. Fewer traitors here, and planets dropping out of the Confederation. You retards grabbed what that’ll mean yet? It means less hassle for us. Every planet we hit is gonna scream to the navy for the same kinda help Mortonridge is getting. That’ll cost them plenty to provide. Money they can’t spend dicking with us.” He looked round the room, knowing he’d won them over.
Again. His face reddened with the heat of victory, three tiny white lines proud on his cheek. That reluctant admiration he’d kindled in them proving he was the man with the plan, and the balls to see it through.
Al raised his glass high in triumph. And it was like a room full of krauts doing their knee-jerk fascist salute as the others held their own glasses up, fast. Jezzibella winked impishly at him from behind the back row, while Kiera’s face was drawn as she considered the implications.
“A toast. Goodbye to that goddamn pain in the ass Confederation.”
The Mindori’s distortion field expanded outwards in a specific pattern of swirls, generating ripples in the fabric of space-time. They pushed against the hull, lifting it from the pedestal in a simple, smooth motion. Inside the large forward lounge, none of the six passengers noticed even a quiver in the apparent gravity field. They’d just finished their meal of mashed turkey granules, which was the only meat product Beth could hammer into a burger shape. Jed was ignoring the sullen stares that were getting flashed his way. Turkey wasn’t so bad after it had been grilled.
Gerald Skibbow looked up at the lounge’s big screen as the edge of the docking ledge slipped towards them. “Where are we going?” he asked.
Webster twitched in surprise, it was the first time he’d heard Gerald speak. The others stared at him, slightly nervous of what would follow.
Even now, after all this time, he was still nutty Gerald to them. Rocio had privately confided to Jed and Beth he couldn’t make any sense of Gerald’s thoughts at all.
A small picture of Rocio’s face appeared in one corner of the screen.
“I’ve been given a patrol flight vector,” he said. “It’s not a very demanding one, we’ll never be more than three million kilometres from New California. I suspect it’s a trial to see if I do as I’m told. I have just filled my reserve bladders with nutrient fluid, if I was going to leave, now would be an obvious time.”
“Are you going to?” Beth asked.
“No. The only place to go is the Edenist habitats and the Confederation. The price for their sanctuary would be cooperating with their physicists. And that would ultimately lead to the defeat of the possessed. I told you before, I need to find other options.”
“I don’t want to leave Monterey,” Gerald said. The screen was now showing the asteroid’s counter-rotating spaceport receding at a considerable speed. “Please go back and let me disembark.”
“Can’t do that, Gerald, mate,” Beth said. “Them possessed, they’d spot you inside Monterey in a flash. Give the whole game away. We’d all wind up like Marie, that way, and they’d punish Rocio, too.”
“I will assist you with Kiera in whatever way I can,” Rocio said. “But first, I must establish myself as one of her servile flock.”
Beth reached over and gripped Gerald’s arm. “We can wait that long, eh?”
Gerald considered her words; although he was sure his thoughts were taking longer to form these days. There was a time when he could give an instant reply to any topic or question. That Gerald existed only in his mind now, a memory that was hard to find and difficult to see. “All right,” he said. It was a tough concession to make. To have been so close to her. Just a few hundred metres. And now having to leave, to abandon her. It would probably be days until they could return. Days darling Marie would have to spend enduring the torment of that terrible woman’s control. The notions of what she would get up to with her captive flesh were horrible. Marie was a lovely little girl, so pretty. Always had lots of boyfriends, which he’d tried not to get upset and protective over.
Back on Lalonde, sex seemed the only thing the possessed were interested in. And like every father since the dawn of civiliz
ation, Marie’s sexuality was the one thing Gerald never dared dwell upon.
It would be that, he admitted in his dark heart. Night after night, Kiera would allow some man to run his hands over her. Would laugh and groan at the abuse. Would demand hot physical violations. Bodies writhing together in the darkness. Beautiful, strong bodies. Gerald whimpered softly.
“You okay?” Beth asked. Beside her, Jed was frowning.
“Fine,” Gerald whispered. His hands were rubbing his perspiring forehead, trying to massage the pain inside. “I just want to help her. And if I could just get to her, I know I could. Loren said so, you see.”
“We’ll be back there in no time, okay, no worries.”
He nodded lamely, returning to pick at the food they’d given him. He had to get to Marie soon. He was sorry about everyone else’s predicament, but what Marie was suffering was unspeakable. Next time they landed at Monterey, he decided, it would be different. No details, but definitely different.
Rocio was aware of Gerald’s ardent, fractured anxiety sinking back under calmer emotions. That man’s mind was a complete enigma. Not that Rocio actually wanted to be privy to such tortured thoughts. Shame that he couldn’t convince Beth and Jed to stay on board by themselves. This entourage of people were making his position more complicated. Ideally, he’d like to winnow the numbers down again.
Now that he was clear of the asteroid, he began to accelerate. Modifying the distortion field to generate ever-more powerful ripples in space-time. He surfed them at seven gees, a secondary manipulation alleviating the force around the life support section. As the sense of freedom rose in tandem with his speed, he allowed his dreamform to blossom. Dark wings slowly spread wide, sweeping eagerly, sending motes of interplanetary dust swirling in his wake. He shook his neck, blinking huge red eyes, flexing his talons. In this state, he was perfectly at one with himself and life. It reaffirmed the conviction that Kiera’s hold over himself and his comrades must be broken.
He began talking to the other hellhawks, probing for emotional nuances.
Building a pattern of those who thought as he did. Of the seventy currently in the New California system, he thought there were possibly nineteen he could count on for open support, another ten would probably side with him if things looked favourable. Several were playing it very coy, while eight or nine, led by Etchells and Cameron Leung, revelled in the prospect of following the Organization fleet into glory. Good enough odds.
Eight hours into his patrol, Hudson Proctor delivered new instructions.
> Kiera’s lieutenant said. >
Rocio expanded his distortion field, probing where Proctor indicated. The ship slithered into his perception as a tight kink of mass, alive with energy.
> he acknowledged.
>
>
>
>
>
>
Rocio changed the distortion field again, concentrating it on a small area just ahead of his beak. Power surged through his patterning cells, and the stress he was applying leapt towards infinite. A wormhole interstice opened, and he shot through, emerging from the terminus less than two seconds later. It folded neatly behind his tailfeathers, returning local space-time to its usual consonance.
The interplanetary ship was three kilometres away, a long silk-grey splinter of metal and composite. Standard configuration of barrel-shaped life support module separated from the drive section by a lattice tower.
It was decelerating at two thirds of a gee, blue-white fusion flame spearing cleanly from its exhaust. Rocio was also aware of another wormhole terminus opening five thousand kilometres away. A hellhawk slid out, deflating its distortion field immediately, and drifting inert. He resisted the temptation to hail it. Shadowing him in such a fashion to monitor his conduct was very unsubtle.
A radar pulse triggered the ship’s transponder: according to the code it was called the Lucky Logorn. Rocio matched velocities with it, and opened a short-range channel. “This is the Organization ship Mindori,” he told them. “You’re approaching New California’s Strategic Defence network without clearance. Please identify yourself.”
“This is Deebank, I guess I’m the captain around here. We haven’t been advertising our presence in case we attracted those goddamn voidhawks. Sorry about that, didn’t mean to give you a scare. We’d like clearance to rendezvous with a low orbit station.”
“Clearance refused. Return to your asteroid.”
“Now just a goddamn minute, we’re loyal members of the Organization here. What gives you the right to order us about?”
Rocio activated a maser cannon on his lower hull, and targeted one of the thermo-dump panels plumbed into Lucky Logorn’s equipment bay. “One. I’m not ordering you, I’m relaying an instruction from the Organization. Two.” He fired.
The blast of coherent maser radiation thumped a half-metre hole into the middle of the thermo-dump panel. Fluorescent orange shards spun away, their glimmer slowly fading to black.
“Fuck you,” Deebank shouted. “You bastards can’t keep us out here forever.”
“Realign your drive. Now. My second shot will be through your fusion tube. You’ll be left drifting out here. The only thing you’ll have to occupy yourselves with is a sweepstake. Is your food going to run out first? Or will it be the air? Then again, a voidhawk might pick you up, and you get used as research lab beasts by the Confederation.”
“You piece of shit.”
“I’m waiting.” Rocio slid closer, picking up the resentment and anger boiling through the eight people in the life support section. There was bitter resignation in there, too.
Sure enough, the fusion drive plume twitched round, sending Lucky Logorn on a shallow arc which would ultimately see it heading back to Almaden.
Cancelling so much delta-V was a long, energy expensive business. It would take them hours.
“We’re going to remember you,” Deebank promised. “Time will come when you need to join us. Don’t expect it to be easy.”
“Join you where?” Rocio asked, genuinely curious.
“On a planet, dick-for-brains.”
“Is that what this was all about? Your fear of space?”
“What the hell did you think we were doing? Invading?”
“I wasn’t told.”
“Okay. So now you understand, will you let us through?”
“I can’t.”
“Bastard.”
Rocio played for the sympathy angle, marshalling his thoughts into contrite concern. “I mean it. There’s another hellhawk shadowing me, making sure I do what I’m told. They’re not certain about my commitment to the cause, you see.”
“Hear that splashing sound? That’s my heart bleeding.”
“Why doesn’t the Organization want you on New California?”
“Because they need the products Almaden makes in its industrial stations. The asteroid has plenty of astroengineering companies who specialise in weapons systems. And we’re the poor saps who have to terrorise non-possessed technicians into keeping them running. You got any idea what that’s like? It’s a crock of shit. I was a soldier when I was alive, I used to fight the kind of fascists who enslaved people like this. I’m telling you, it ain’t right. It ain’t what I was brought up to do. None of this is.”
“Then why stay in the Organization?”
“If you ain’t for Capone, you’re against him. That’s the way it works. He’s been real smart the way he’s set things up. Those lieutenants of his will do anything to keep their
position. They put the screws on us, and we have to put the screws on the non-possessed. If there’s any trouble, if we start to object, or get uppity, they just call on the fleet for back up. Don’t they? You’re the enforcers, you make it all hang together for him.”
“We have our own enforcer, she’s called Kiera.”
“The Deadnight babe? No shit? I wouldn’t mind submitting my poor body to some enforcement by her.” Laughter rumbled across the gap between the ships.
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever met her.”
“Tough bitch, huh?”
“The worst.”
“You don’t sound too happy about that.”
“You and I are in the same situation.”
“Yeah? So listen, maybe we can come to some kind of arrangement? I mean, if we have to go back to Almaden, the lieutenants are going to make us eat shit for pulling this stunt. Why don’t you take us back to New California, let us off at a low orbit station, or if you’ve got a spaceplane we could use that. If we get down there to the surface, we stay. Believe me. There’d be no comeback.”
“Fine for you.”
“We’ll get you a body. A human one, the very best there is. There’s millions of non-possessed left on the planet; we’ll get one ready for possession and hold it for you. This way you get down there without any of the risk we’ll be going through. Listen, you can sense I’m telling the truth. Right?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t interest me.”
“What? Why not? Come on! It’s the greatest deal in town.”
“Not for me. You people really hate this empty universe, don’t you?”
“Oh, like you don’t? You were in the beyond. You can hear the beyond. It’s always there, just one step away on the other side from night. We have to get away from that.”
“I don’t.”
“Crap.”
“But I don’t. Really. Certainly I can still hear the lost souls, but it’s not as if they can touch me. All they are is a reminder of that nothingness. They’re not a threat themselves. Fear is the only thing that drives you to escape. I’ve got over that. Mindori belongs here in the emptiness, this is its perfect milieu. Having this construct as my host has taught me not to be afraid. Perhaps it should be you who try and find blackhawk and voidhawk bodies? Can you imagine that? It would solve everyone’s problem, without all this conflict and violence. If after you die, you were to be given a voidhawk body to possess. Enough could be grown for the lost souls, I’m sure of it, given time and commitment. Then ultimately, space would become filled with billions of us, the entire human race transformed into dark angels flitting between the stars.”