“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 bey
ond 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.
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