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 th
ey 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. Anoth
er 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.”
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