The Neutronium Alchemist
Page 92
“What would you have us do? I am not so valiant that I can resist this release from the torture of the beyond. Perhaps, sir, you see such weakness as my true crime. If so, I plead guilty to that ignominy. Yet, know you this, I would grasp at such an escape every time it is offered, though I know it to be the most immoral of thefts.”
“He saved us,” Genevieve protested hotly. “Quinn Dexter was going to do truly beastly things to me and Louise. Fletcher stopped him. No one else could. He’s not a bad man; you shouldn’t say he is. And I won’t let you do anything horrid to him. I don’t want him to have to go back there into the beyond.” She hugged Fletcher tighter.
“All right,” Endron said. “Maybe you’re not like the Capone Organization, or the ones on Lalonde. But I can’t let you walk around here. This is my home, damn it. Maybe it is unfair, and unkind that you suffered in the beyond. You’re still a possessor, nothing changes that. We are opposed, it’s fundamental to what we are.”
“Then you, sir, have a very pressing problem. For I am sworn to see these ladies to their destination in safety.”
“Wait,” Louise said. She turned to Endron. “Nothing has changed. We still wish to leave Phobos, and you know Fletcher is not a danger to you or your people. You said so.”
Endron gestured at the crumpled form of Faurax. “I can’t,” he said desperately.
“If Fletcher opens your bodies to the souls in the beyond, who knows what the people who come through will be like,” Louise said. “I don’t think they will be as restrained as Fletcher, not if the ones I’ve encountered are anything to judge by. You would be the cause of Phobos falling to the possessed. Is that what you want?”
“What the hell do you think? You’ve backed me into a corner.”
“No we haven’t, there’s an easy way out of this, for all of us.”
“What?”
“Help us, of course. You can finish recording Fletcher’s passport for us, you can find a zero-tau pod for Faurax and keep him in it until this is all over. And you’ll know for certain that we’ve gone and that your asteroid is safe.”
“This is insane. I don’t trust you, and you’d be bloody stupid to trust me.”
“Not really,” she said. “If you tell us you’ll do it, Fletcher will know if you’re telling us the truth. And once we’re gone you still won’t change your mind, because you could never explain away what you’ve done to the police.”
“You can read minds?” Endron’s consternation had deepened.
“I will indeed know of any treachery which blackens your heart.”
“What do you intend to do once you reach Tranquillity?”
“Find my fiancé. Apart from that, we have no plans.”
Endron gave Faurax another fast appraisal. “I don’t think I have a lot of choice, do I? If you stop this electronic warfare effect, I’ll get a freight mechanoid to take Faurax to the Far Realm. I can use one of the on board zero-tau pods without anyone asking questions. Lord knows what I’ll say when this is over. They’ll just fling me out of an airlock, I expect.”
“You’re saving your world,” Louise said. “You’ll be a hero.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
***
The cave went a long way back into the polyp cliff, which allowed Dariat to light a fire without having to worry about it being spotted. He’d chosen the beach at the foot of the endcap as today’s refuge. Surely here at least he and Tatiana would be safe? There were no bridges over the circumfluous reservoir. If Bonney came for them she’d have to use either a boat or one of the tube carriages (however unlikely that was). Which meant that for once they’d have a decent warning.
The hunter’s ability to get close before either he or Rubra located her was unnerving. Even Rubra seemed genuinely concerned by it. Dariat never could understand how she ever located them in the first place. But locate them she did. There hadn’t been a day since he met Tatiana when Bonney hadn’t come after them.
His one guess was that her perception ability was far greater than anyone else’s, allowing her to see the minds of everybody in the habitat. If so, the distance was extraordinary; he couldn’t feel anything beyond a kilometre at the most, and ten metres of solid polyp blocked him completely.
Tatiana finished gutting the pair of trout she’d caught, and wrapped them in foil. Both were slipped into the shallow hole below the fire. “They ought to be done in about half an hour,” she said.
He smiled blankly, remembering the fires he and Anastasia had made, the meals she had prepared for him. Campfire cooking was an outlandish concept to him then. Used to regulated, heat inducted sachets, he was always impressed by the cuisine she produced from such primitive arrangements.
“Did she ever say anything about me?” he asked.
“Not much. I didn’t see much of her after she set herself up as a mistress of Thoale. Besides which, I was discovering boys myself about then.” She gave a raucous laugh.
Apart from the physical resemblance, it was difficult to accept any other connection between Tatiana and Anastasia. It was inconceivable that his beautiful love would have ever grown into anything resembling this cheery, easygoing woman, with an overloud voice. Anastasia would have kept her quiet dignity, her sly humour, her generous spirit.
It was hard for him to feel much sympathy for Tatiana, and harder still to tolerate her behaviour, especially given their circumstances. He persisted, though, knowing that to desert her now would make him unworthy, a betrayal of his own one love.
Damn Rubra for knowing that.
“Whatever she did say, I’d appreciate you telling me.”
“Okay. I suppose I owe you that at least.” She settled herself more comfortably into the thin sand, her bracelets tinkling softly. “She said her new boy—that’s you—was very different. She said you’d been hurt by Anstid since the day you were born, but that she could see the real person buried underneath all the pain and loneliness. She thought she could free you from his thrall. Strange, she really believed it; as if you were some sort of injured bird she’d rescued. I don’t think she realized what a mistake she’d made. Not until the end. That was why she did it.”
“I am true to her. I always have been.”
“So I see. Thirty years planning.” She whistled a long single note.
“I’m going to kill Anstid. I have the power now.”
Tatiana began to laugh, a big belly rumble that shook her loose cotton dress about. “Ho yes, I can see why she’d fall for you. All that sincerity and retention. Cupid tipped his arrows with a strong potion that day you two met.”
“Don’t mock.”
Her laughter vanished in an instant. Then he could see the resemblance to Anastasia, the passion in her eyes. “I would never mock my sister, Dariat. I pity her for the trick Tarrug played on her. She was too young to meet you, too damn young. If she’d had a few more years to gather wisdom, she would have seen you are beyond any possible salvation. But she was young, and stupid the way we all are at that age. She couldn’t refuse the challenge to do good, to bring a little light into your prison. When you get to my age, you give lost causes a wide passage.”
“I am not lost, not to Chi-ri, not to Thoale. I will slay Anstid. And that is thanks to Anastasia, she broke that Lord’s spell over me.”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, listen to him. Stop reading the words, Dariat, learn with your heart. Just because she told you the names of our Lords and Ladies, doesn’t mean you know them. You won’t kill Anstid. Rubra is not a realm Lord, he’s a screwed-up old memory pattern. Sure, his bananas mind makes him bitter and vindictive, which is an aspect of Anstid, but he’s not the real thing. Hatred isn’t going to vanish from the universe just because you nuke a habitat. You can see that, can’t you?”
<
<
<
Dariat made an effort to calm himself, aware of the little worms of light scurrying over his clothing. A sheepish grin unfurled on his lips. “Yes, I can see that. Besides, without hatred you could never know how sweet love is. We need hatred.”
“That’s more like it.” She started applauding. “We’ll make a Starbridge of you yet.”
“Too late for that. And I’m still going to nuke Rubra.”
“Not before I’m out of here, I hope.”
“I’ll get you out.”
<
“How?” Tatiana asked.
“I’ll be honest. I don’t know. But I’ll find a way. I owe you and Anastasia that much.”
<
<
<
The voidhawks on observation duty perceived the three Adamist starships emerge from their ZTT jump twelve thousand kilometres out from Valisk. As their thermo-dump panels, sensor clusters, and communications arrays deployed, the voidhawks started to pick up high-bandwidth microwave transmissions. The ships were beaming out news reports all over the Srinagar system, telling everyone who was interested how well the Organization was doing, and how New California was prospering. There were several long items on the possessed curing injuries and broken bones in the non-possessed.
The one thing the voidhawks couldn’t intercept was the signal between the ships and Valisk. Whatever was said, it resulted in eight hellhawks arriving to escort the New California starships to the habitat’s spaceport.
Alarmed by the implication of Capone extending his influence into the Srinagar system, Consensus requested Rubra monitor developments closely.
For once, he wasn’t inclined to argue.
Kiera waited for Patricia Mangano at the end of the passageway which led up to the axial chamber three kilometres above her. Without the tube carriages, every ascent and descent had to be on foot. Starting at the axial chamber, the passageway contained a ladder for the first kilometre, then gave way to a staircase for the final two as the curvature became more pronounced. It ended two kilometres above the base of the endcap, emerging from the polyp shell onto a shelflike plateau which was reached by a switchback road.
Thankfully, similar plateaus around the endcap gave them admission to the docking ledge lounges. Which meant they’d all but stopped using the counter-rotating spaceport.
If Patricia was annoyed by the time and physical effort it took her to descend, it was hidden deeper than Kiera’s perception was able to discern. Instead, when Capone’s envoy emerged into the light, she smiled with a simple delight as she looked around. Kiera had to admit, the little plateau was an excellent vantage point. The distinct bands of colour which comprised Valisk’s interior shone lucidly in the light tube’s relentless emission.
Patricia shielded her eyes with one hand as she gazed about the worldlet.
“Nothing anybody says can prepare you for this.”
“Didn’t you have habitats in your time?” Kiera asked.
“Absolutely not. I’m strictly a twentieth-century gal. Al prefers us as his lieutenants, that way we understand each other better. Some modern types, I can only comprehend about one word in ten.”
“I’m from the twenty-fourth century myself. Never set foot on Earth.”
“Lucky you.”
Kiera gestured at the open-top truck parked at the end of the road.
Bonney was sitting in the backseat, ever vigilant.
Kiera switched on the motor and began the drive down the road. “I’ll warn you from the start, anything you say in the open is overheard by Rubra. We think he tells the Edenists just about everything that goes on in here.”
“What I have to say is private,” Patricia said.
“I thought so. Don’t worry, we have some clean rooms.”
It wasn’t too difficult for Rubra to infiltrate the circular tower at the base of the northern endcap. He just needed to be careful. The possessed could always detect small animals like mice and bats, which were simply blasted by a bolt of white fire. So he had to resort to more unusual servitors.
Deep in the birthing caverns of the southern endcap, incubators were used to nurture insects whose DNA templates had been stored unused since the time when Valisk was germinated. Centipedes and bees began to emerge, each one affinity-controlled by a sub-routine.
The bees flew straight out into the main cavern, where they hovered and loitered among all the temporary camps set up around the starscraper lobbies. Coverage wasn’t perfect, but they provided him with a great deal of information about what went on inside the tents and cottages, where his usual perception was blocked.
The centipedes were carried aloft by birds, to be deposited on the roof of the tower and other substantial buildings. Like the spiders which the Edenist intelligence agency used to infiltrate their observation targets, they scuttled along conditioning ducts and cable conduits, hiding just behind grilles and sockets where they could scrutinize the interior.
Their deployment allowed Rubra and the Kohistan Consensus to watch as Kiera led Patricia Mangano into Magellanic Itg’s boardroom. Patricia had one assistant with her, while Kiera was accompanied by Bonney and Stanyon. No one else from Valisk’s new ruling council had been invited.
“What happened?” Patricia asked after she had claimed a chair at the big table.
“In what respect?” Kiera replied cautiously.
“Come on. You’ve got your hellhawks flitting about the Confederation with impunity to bring back warm bodies. And when they get here, the habitat looks like it’s a Third World refugee camp left over from my own century. You’re living in the iron age, here. It doesn’t make any sense. Bitek is the one technology that keeps working around us. You should be lording it up in the starscraper apartments.”
“Rubra happened,” Kiera said bitterly. “He’s still in the neural strata. The one expert we had on affinity who could possibly remove him has … failed. It means we’ve got to go through the starscrapers a centimetre at a time to make them safe. We’re getting there. It’ll take time, but we’ve got eternity, after all.”
“You could leave.”
“I don’t think so.”
Patricia lounged back, grinning. “Ah, right. That would mean evacuating to a planet. How would you keep your position and authority there?”
“The same way Capone does. People need governments, they need organizing. We’re a very socially oriented race.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“We’re doing all right here. Have you really come all this way just to take cheap shots?”
“Not at all. I’m here to offer you a deal.”
“Yes?”
“Antimatter in return for your hellhawks.”
Kiera glanced at Bonney and Stanyon; the latter’s face was alive with interest. “What exactly do you think we can do with antimatter?”
“The same as us,” Patricia said. “Blow Srinagar’s SD network clean to hell. Then you’ll be able to get off this dump. The planet will be wide open to you. And as you’ll be running the invasion, you’ll be able to shape whatever society springs up among the possessed down there. That’s the way it works for the Organization. We begin it, we rule it. Whether it works here, depends on how good you are. Capone is the best.”
“But not perfect.”
“You have your problems, we have ours. The Edenist voidhawks are causing a lot of disruption to our fleet activities. We need the hellhawks to deal with them. Their distortion fields can locate the stealth bombs being flung at us.”
“Interesting proposition.”
“Don’t try and bargain, please. That would be insulting. We have an irritant; you have a potential disaster looming.”
“If you don’t take too much offence at the
question, I’d like to know how much antimatter you’ll deliver.”
“As much as it takes, and the ships to deploy them, providing you can keep your end. How many hellhawks can you offer?”
“We have several out collecting Deadnight kids. But I can probably let you have seventy.”
“And you can keep them under control, make them follow orders?”
“Oh, yes.”
“How?”
Kiera gloated. “It’s not something you’ll ever be able to duplicate. We can return the souls possessing the hellhawks directly into human bodies. That’s what they all want eventually, and that’s what we’ll give them, providing they obey.”
“Smart. So do we have a deal?”
“Not with you. I’ll travel to New California myself and talk to Capone. That way we’ll both know how much we can trust the other.”
Kiera hung back after Patricia left the boardroom. “This changes everything,” she said to Bonney. “Even if we don’t get enough antimatter to knock over Srinagar, it’ll give us the deterrence to prevent another voidhawk attack.”
“It looks like it. Do you think Capone is on the level?”
“I’m not sure. He must need the hellhawks pretty badly, or he wouldn’t have offered us the antimatter. Even if he’s got a production station, it won’t exactly be plentiful.”
“You want me to come with you?”
“No.” The tip of her tongue licked over her lips, a fast movement by a lash of forked flesh. “We’re either going to be leaving here for Srinagar, or I’ll deal with Capone to provide us with enough bodies to fill the habitat. Either way, we won’t be needing that shit Dariat anymore. See to it.”
“You bet.”
<
<
<
<