I always was right about you. You were the best. Who else could still burn so hot after thirty years? Damn, why did you ever
have to meet her? Together we could have rebuilt the company into a galaxy challenger.
Such flattery. I’m honoured.
Don’t be. Help me.
What?
You have got to be fucking joking.
No. Together we could beat Kiera, purge the habitat of her cronies. You can rule Valisk yet.
The Edenists were right, you are insane.
The Edenists are frightened by my determination. You should know, you inherited that gene, it seems.
Yeah. So you know you can’t deflect me. Don’t even try.
Dariat, you’re not one of them, boy, not one of the possessed. Not really. What can they possibly give you afterwards, huh?
Ever thought of that? What sort of culture are they going to build? This is just an aberration of nature, a nonsense, and
a transient one at that. Life has to have a purpose, and they’re not alive. This energistic ability, the way you can create
out of nothing, how can you square that with human behaviour? It’s not possible, the two are not compatible, never will be.
Look at yourself. If you want Anastasia back, bring her back. Find her in the beyond, get her back here. You can have everything
now, remember? Kiera said so, did she not? Are you a part of that, Dariat? You have to decide, boy. Someday. If you don’t,
they’ll do it for you.
“I can’t bring her back,” he whispered.
What’s that?
I can’t. You understand nothing.
Try me.
You, a confessor father? Never.
I always have been. I am the confessor for everyone inside me, you know that. I am the repository of everyone’s secrets. Including
those of Anastasia Rigel.
I know everything about Anastasia. We had no secrets. We were in love.
Really? She had a life before you met her, you know. Seventeen long years. And afterwards, too.
Dariat glanced around with cold anger, his appearance sliding back to the white-suited ascetic.
There was no afterwards. She died! Because of you.
If you knew of her past, you would understand what I meant.
What secrets?
he demanded.
Help me, and I’ll show you.
You shit! I’m going to cremate you, I’ll dance on your fragments—
Rubra’s principal routine watched Dariat’s rage run its course. He thought at one point that the man would revert to flailing
at the tunnel walls with white fire again. But Dariat managed to hang on to that last shred of control—barely.
Rubra stayed silent. He knew it was too early to play his ace, the one final secret he had kept safe for the last thirty years.
The doubt he had planted deep in Dariat’s mind would have to be teased further, tormented into full-blown paranoia before
the revelation was exposed.
• • •
Lady Macbeth
’s event horizon vanished, allowing her mushroom-shaped star trackers to rise out of their jump recesses and scan around.
Fifteen seconds later the flight computer confirmed the starship had emerged fifty thousand kilometres above Tranquillity’s
non-rotational spaceport. By the time her electronic warfare sensors registered, eight of the habitat’s Strategic Defence
platforms had locked on to the hull, despite the fact their coordinate was smack in the centre of a designated emergence zone.
“Jesus,” Joshua muttered sourly. “Welcome home, people, nice to see you again.” He looked over to Gaura, who was lying on
Warlow’s acceleration couch. “Update Tranquillity on our situation, fast, please. It seems a little trigger-happy today.”
Combat sensors had located four blackhawks on interception trajectories, accelerating towards them at six gees.
Gaura acknowledged him with an indolent wrist flick. The Edenist’s eyes were closed; he’d been communicating with the habitat
personality more or less from the moment the starship had completed the ZTT jump. Even with affinity it was difficult to convey
their situation in a single quick summary; explanations, backed up with full memory exposure, took several minutes. He detected
more than one ripple of surprise within the personality’s serene thoughts as the story of Lalonde unfolded in its mentality.
When he’d finished, Ione directed her identity trait at him in the Edenist custom.
That’s some yarn you’ve got there,
she said.
Two days ago I wouldn’t have believed a word of it, but as we’ve had warning fleks arriving from Avon on an almost hourly
basis for the last day and a half all I can say is I’ll grant you docking permission.
Thank you, Ione.
However, you will all have to be checked for possession before I’ll admit you into the habitat. I can hardly expose the entire
population to the risk of contamination on the word of one man, even though you seem genuine.
Of course.
How’s Joshua?
He is well. A remarkable young man.
Yes.
The flight computer’s display showed the Strategic Defence platforms disengaging their weapons lock. Joshua received a standard
acknowledgement from the spaceport’s traffic control centre followed by a datavised approach vector.
“I need a docking bay which can handle casualties,” he datavised back. “And put a pediatric team on alert status, as well
as some biophysics specialists. These kids have had a real hard time on Lalonde, and that only finished when they got nuked.”
“I am assembling the requisite medical teams now,” Tranquillity replied. “They will be ready by the time you dock. I am also
alerting a spaceport maintenance crew. Judging by the state of your hull, and the vapour leakages I can observe, I believe
it would be appropriate.”
“Thank you, Tranquillity. Considerate as ever.” He waited for Ione to come on-line and say something, but the channel switched
back to traffic control’s guidance updates.
If that’s the way she wants it… Fine by me. His features slumped into a grouch.
He ignited the
Lady Mac’s
two functional fusion tubes, aligning the ship on their approach vector. They headed in for Tranquillity at one and a half
gees.
“They believe all that spiel about possession?” Sarha asked Gaura, a note of worried scepticism in her voice.
“Yes.” He queried the habitat about the fleks from Avon. “The First Admiral’s precautions have been endorsed by the Assembly.
By now ninety per cent of the Confederation should be aware of the situation.”
“Wait a minute,” Dahybi said. “We only just got back here from Lalonde, and we didn’t exactly hang around. How the hell could
that navy squadron alert Avon two or three days ago?”
“They didn’t,” Gaura said. “The possessed must have got off Lalonde some time ago. Apparently Laton had to destroy an entire
Atlantean island to prevent them from spreading.”
“Shit,” Dahybi grunted. “You mean they’re loose in the Confederation already?”
“I’m afraid so. It looks like Shaun Wallace was telling Kelly the truth after all. I had hoped it was all some subtle propaganda
on his part,” the Edenist added sadly.
The news acted as a mood damper right through the starship. Their expected sanctuary wasn’t so secure after all; they’d escaped
a battle to find a war brewing. Not even an Edenist psyche could suppress that much gloom. The children from Lalonde (those
not squeezed into the zero-tau pods) picked up on it, another emotional ricochet, though admittedly not as large as all the
others they’d been through. The happiness Father Horst had promised them waited at the end of their journey was proving elusive.
Even the fact the voyage was ending didn’t help much.
The damage
Lady Macbeth
had suffered in the fight above Lalonde didn’t affect her manoeuvrability, not with Joshua piloting. She closed in on her
designated docking bay, CA 5-099, at the very centre of the spaceport disk, precisely aligned along the vector assigned by
traffic control. There was no hint that fifteen attitude control thrusters had been disabled, and she was venting steadily
from emergency dump valves as well as a couple of fractured cryogenic feed pipes.
By that time almost a quarter of the habitat population was accessing the spaceport’s sensors, watching her dock. The news
companies had broken into their schedules to announce that a single ship had made it back from Lalonde. Reporters had been
very quick off the mark in discovering the pediatric teams were assembling in the bay. (Kelly’s boss was making frantic datavises
to the incoming starship, to no avail.)
The space industry people, industrial station workers, and ships’ crews kicking their heels in the bars because of the quarantine
observed the approach with a sense of troubled awe. Yes, Joshua had come through again, but the state of old
Lady Mac ..
. Charred, flaking nultherm foam exposed sections of her hull which showed innumerable heat-stress ripples (a sure sign of
energy beam strikes), melted sensor clusters, only two fusion tubes functional. It must have been one hell of a scrap. They
all knew no one else would be returning. Knowledge that every friend, colleague, or vague acquaintance who had accompanied
Terrance Smith was either radioactive dust or lost to possession was hard to accept. Those starships were powerful, fast,
and well armed.
The disembarkment process was, as expected, a shambles. People kept emerging from the airlock tube as if
Lady Mac
were the focus of some dimensional twist, her internal space far larger than that which the hull enclosed. Edenists formed
a good percentage of the exiles, much to the surprise of the rover reporters. They helped a horde of wondrously senseogenic,
scared-looking refugee kids in ragged clothes. Pediatric nurses floated after them in the reception compartment, while reporters
dived like airborne sharks to ask the children how they felt/what they’d seen. Tears started to flow.
How the hell did they get in there?
Ione asked the habitat. Serjeants launched themselves to intercept the reporters.
Jay Hilton hugged her legs to her chest as she drifted across the compartment, shivering unhappily. None of this was what
she’d been expecting, not the starship voyage nor their arrival. She tried to catch sight of Father Horst amid the noisy swirl
of bodies bouncing around the compartment, knowing that he had others to look out for and probably couldn’t spare much time
for her. In fact, she wouldn’t be needed for anything much now there were plentiful adults around to take care of things again.
Perhaps if she hunched up really small everyone would ignore her, and she’d be able to have a look at the habitat’s park.
Jay had heard stories of Edenist habitats and how beautiful they were; back in the arcology she’d often daydreamed that one
day she’d visit Jupiter, despite everything Father Varhoos preached about the evils of bitek.
The opportunity to escape the melee never quite presented itself. A reporter soared past her, noticed she was the oldest kid
in the compartment, and used a grab hoop to brake himself abruptly. His mouth split into a super-friendly smile, the kind
his neural nanonics program advised was best to interface trustfully with Young Children. “Hi there. Isn’t this atrocious?
They should have organized things better.”
“Yes,” Jay said doubtfully.
“My name is Matthias Rems.” The smile broadened further.
“Jay Hilton.”
“Well, hi there, Jay. I’m glad you’ve reached Tranquillity, you’re quite safe here. From what we’ve heard it was nasty for
all of you on Lalonde.”
“Yes!”
“Really? What happened?”
“Well, Mummy got possessed the first night. And then—” A hand closed on her shoulder. She glanced around to see Kelly Tirrel
giving Matthias Rems an aggressive stare.
“He wants to know what happened,” Jay said brightly. She liked Kelly, admiring her right from the moment she arrived at the
savanna homestead to rescue them. On the voyage to Tranquillity she’d secretly decided that she was going to be a tough, Confederation-roaming
reporter like Kelly when she grew up.
“What happened is your story, Jay,” Kelly said slowly. “It belongs to you; it’s all you’ve got left. And if he wants to hear
it he has to offer you a great deal of money for it.”
“Kelly!” Matthias flashed her a slightly exasperated you-know-the-score grin.
It made no discernible impression on Kelly. “Pick on someone your own size, Matthias. Ripping off traumatized children is
low even for you. I’m covering for Jay.”
“Is that right, Jay?” he asked. “Did you thumbprint a contract with Collins?”
“What?” Jay glanced from one to the other, puzzled.
“Serjeant!” Kelly shouted.
Jay squeaked in alarm as a glitter-black hand closed around Matthias Rems’s upper arm. The owner of the hand was a hard-skinned
monster worse than any shape a possessed had ever worn.
“It’s all right, Jay.” Kelly grinned for the first time in days. “It’s on our side. This is what Tranquillity uses for its
police force.”
“Oh.” Jay swallowed loudly.
“I’d like to complain about an attempted violation of confidentiality copyright,” Kelly told the serjeant. “Also, Matthias
is breaking the sense-media ethics charter concerning the approach and enticement of minors in the absence of their parents
or guardians.”
“Thank you, Kelly,” the serjeant said. “And welcome home, I offer my congratulations on your endurance through difficult times.”
She grimaced numbly at the bitek servitor.
“Come along now, sir,” the serjeant said to Matthias Rems. It pushed away from the compartment bulkhead with its stocky legs,
the pair of them heading for one of the hatchways.
“Don’t ever trust reporters, Jay,” Kelly said. “We’re not nice people. Worse than the possessed really; they only steal bodies,
we steal your whole life and make a profit out of it.”