“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.
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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.
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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 der
ision 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).
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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.
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Al stared at Kiera, not quite believing she had the balls to tur
n 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.”
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