Of course, you wouldn’t actually know much about what’s happening to the subjects of Kiera’s politburo dictatorship these
days,
Rubra continued pleasantly.
You being a loner now. Did you know dear old Bonney was shouting for you yesterday? I whisked one of the non-possessed away
from her clutches, put him on a tube carriage, and shot him off to one of my safe areas. I don’t think she was very happy
about it. Your name came up several times.
Sarcasm is a pitiful form of wit.
Absolutely, my boy. So you won’t be letting it get to you, will you?
No.
Mind you, Kiera is having some success. The second hellhawk full of kids arrived this morning, looking for that bright new
world she promised in her recording. Two dozen of them; the youngest was only nine. Would you like to see what was done to
them so they could be possessed? I have all the memories, nobody tried to block my perception from that ceremony.
Shut up.
Oh, dear, is that a twang of conscience I detect?
As you well know, I don’t care what happens to the morons who get suckered here. All I’m interested in is how badly I’m going
to fuck you up.
I understand. But then I know you better than Kiera does. It’s a pity you don’t understand me.
Wrong. I know you completely.
You don’t, my boy. You don’t know what I’m holding secret. Anastasia would thank me for what I’m doing, the protection I’m
extending you.
Dariat growled, sinking his head into his hands. He had chosen this spot for the seclusion it offered from Kiera’s merry band
of maniacs. He wanted somewhere quiet to meditate. Free from distractions he could try to formulate a mental pattern which
had the ability to penetrate the neural strata. But he wasn’t free of distractions, he never could be. For Rubra would never
tire of playing his game; the insinuations, the doubts, the dark hints.
During the last thirty years, Dariat thought he’d perfected patience to an inhuman degree. But now he was finding that a different
kind of patience was required. Despite a herculean resolution he was beginning to question if Rubra really did have any secrets.
It was stupid, of course, because Rubra was bluffing, running an elaborate disinformation campaign. However, if Anastasia
did have some secret, some legacy, the only entity who would know was Rubra.
Yet if it did exist, why hadn’t Rubra used it already? Both of them knew this was a struggle to the bitterest of ends.
Anastasia could never have done anything which would make him betray himself. Not sweet Anastasia, who had always warned him
about Anstid. Her Lord Thoale made sure she knew the consequences of every action. Anastasia understood destiny. Why did I
never listen to her?
Anastasia left nothing for me,
he said.
Oh, yeah? In that case, I’ll do a deal with you, Dariat.
Not interested.
You should be. I’m asking you to join me.
What?
Join me, here in the neural strata. Transfer yourself over like a dying Edenist. We can become a duality.
You have got to be fucking joking.
No. I have been considering this for some time. Our current situation is not going to end well, not for either of us. Both
of us are at odds with Kiera; that will never change. But together we could beat her easily, purge the habitat of her cronies.
You can rule Valisk yet.
You used to control a multistellar industrial empire, Rubra. Now look what you’re reduced to. You’re pathetic, Rubra. Contemptible.
And the best thing is, you know it.
Rubra shifted his principal focus from the linen-suited young man, withdrawing to contemplate a general perception of the
habitat. Bonney Lewin was missing again. That damn woman was getting too good at foxing his observation routines. He automatically
expanded the secondary routines surrounding and protecting the remaining non-possessed. She’d show up near one of them soon
enough.
He didn’t agree,
Rubra said to the Kohistan Consensus.
That is unfortunate. Salter is expending a great deal of effort to collect her Deadnight followers.
Her what?
Deadnight is the name which her subversive recording has acquired. Unfortunately a great many young Adamists are finding it
seductive.
Don’t I know it. You should see what she does to them when they get here. Those hellhawks should never have been allowed to
collect them.
There is little we can do. We do not have the capability to shadow every hellhawk flight.
Pity.
Yes. The hellhawks are causing us some concern. So far they have not been used in an aggressor role. If they were deployed
in combat with Valisk’s armament resources behind them, they would pose a formidable problem.
So you keep telling me. Don’t say you’ve finally come to a decision?
We have. With your permission we would like to remove their threat potential.
Do as you would be done by, and do it first. Well, well, you’ve finally started thinking like me.There’s hope for all of you
yet. Okay, go ahead.
Thank you, Rubra. We know this must be difficult for you.
Just make damn sure you don’t miss. Some of my industrial stations are very close to my shell.
Rubra had always maintained an above-average number of Strategic Defence platforms around Valisk. Given his semi-paranoid
nature it was inevitable he should want to make local space as secure as possible. Forty-five weapons platforms covered a
bubble of space fifty thousand kilometres in diameter with the habitat and its comprehensive parade of industrial stations
at the centre. They were complemented by two hundred sensor satellites, sweeping both inwards and outwards. No one had ever
attempted an act of aggression within Valisk’s sphere of interest—a remarkable achievement considering the kind of ships which
frequented the spaceport.
Magellanic Itg had manufactured the network, developing indigenous designs and fabricating all the components itself. A policy
which had earned the company a healthy quantity of export orders. It also enabled Rubra to install his personality as the
network’s executive. He certainly wasn’t about to trust any of his woefully ineffectual descendants with his own defence.
That arrangement had come to an abrupt end with the emergence of the possessed. His control over the network was via affinity
with bitek management processors that were integrated into every platform’s command circuitry. He hadn’t even realized he’d
lost control of the platforms until he’d attempted to interdict the hellhawks when they first revealed themselves. Afterwards,
he’d worked out that somebody—that little shit Dariat, no doubt—had subverted his SD governor thought routines long enough
to load powerdown orders into every platform.
With the power off, there was no way of regaining control through the bitek processors. Every platform would have to be reactivated
manually. Which was exactly what Kiera had done. Spacecraft had rendezvoused with the platforms and taken out Rubra’s bitek
management processors, replacing them with electronic processors and new fire authority codes.
A new SD Command centre was established in the counterrotating spaceport, outside Rubra’s influence. He couldn’t strike at
that like he could the starscrapers. The possessed technicians who reactivated the network were convinced they had made it
independent, a system which only Kiera and her newly installed codes could control.
What neither they nor Dariat quite appreciated were the myriad number of physical interfaces between the neural strata and
Valisk’s communications net. The tube trains and the starscraper lifts were the most obvious examples, but every mechanical
and electronic utility system had a similar junction, a small processor nodule which converted fibre optic pulses to nerve
impulses and vice versa. And Magellanic Itg not only built Valisk’s communications net, it also supplied ninety per cent of
the counter-rotating spaceport’s electronics. A fact which even fewer people were aware of was that every company processor
had a back-door access function hardwired in, to which Rubra alone had the key.
Within seconds of the possessed establishing their new SD command channels he was in the system. A delicious irony, he felt,
a ghost in the ghosts’ machinery. The devious interface circuits he’d established to gain entry couldn’t support anything
like the data traffic necessary to give him full control of the platforms once more, but he could certainly do unto others
what they’d done to him.
On the ready signal from the Kohistan Consensus, Rubra immediately sent a squall of orders out to the SD platforms. Command
codes were wiped and replaced, safety limiters were taken off line, fusion generator management programs were reformatted.
In the commandeered spaceport management office used to run the habitat’s SD network, every single alarm tripped at once.
The whole room was flooded with red light from AV projectors and holoscreens. Then the power went off, plunging the crew into
darkness.
“What the holy fuck is happening?” the recently appointed network captain shouted. A bright candle flame ignited at the tip
of his index finger, revealing equally confounded faces all around him. He reached for his communications block to call Kiera
Salter, dreading what she would say. But his hand never made it.
“Oh, shit,
look”
someone cried.
Severe white light began to flood in through the office’s single port.
In forty-five fusion generators the plasma jet had become unstable, perturbed by rogue manipulations in the magnetic confinement
field. Burnthrough occurred, plasma striking the confinement chamber walls, vaporizing the material, which increased the pressure
a thousandfold. Forty-five fusion generators ruptured almost simultaneously, tearing apart the SD platforms in a burst of
five million degree shrapnel and irradiated gas.
You’re clear,
Rubra told the waiting fleet.
Three hundred wormhole termini opened, englobing the habitat. Voidhawks shot out. Two hundred were designated to eradicate
the industrial stations, depriving Kiera of their enormous armament manufacturing base. The bitek starships immediately swooped
around onto their assault vectors. Kinetic missiles flashed out of their launch cradles, closing on the stations at sixteen
gees. Each salvo was aimed so that the impact blast would kick the debris shower away from the habitat, minimizing the possibility
of collision damage to the polyp shell.
The remaining hundred voidhawks were given suppression duties. Flying in ten-strong formations they broadcast affinity warnings
to the thoroughly disconcerted hellhawks sitting on the docking ledges, ordering them to remain where they were. Sharp ribbons
of ruby-red light from targeting lasers made the ledge polyp shimmer like black ice speared by an early morning sun. Refracted
beams twisted around the alien shapes perched on the pedestals as the voidhawks strove to match their discordant vectors with
the habitat’s rotation.
Closer to the habitat, cyclones of shiny debris were churning out from the ruined industrial stations. Victorious voidhawks
dived and spun above the metallic constellations, racing away ahead of the perilous wavefront of sharp high-velocity slivers.
The hellhawks sat on their pedestals, observing the carnage with mute impotence.
Exemplary shooting,
Rubra told the Kohistan Consensus.
Just remember when this is all over, you’re paying Magellanic Itg’s compensation claim.
Three hundred wormhole interstices opened. The voidhawks vanished in an extraordinary display of synchronization. Elapsed
time of the attack was ninety-three seconds.
Even in the heat of passion Kiera Salter could sense nearby minds starting to flare in alarm. She tried to dislodge Stanyon
from her back and rise to her feet. When he resisted, tightening his grip, she simply smacked an energistic bolt into his
chest. He grunted, the impact shoving him backwards.
“What the fuck are you playing at, bitch?” he growled.
“Be silent.” She stood up, her wishes banishing the soreness and rising bruises. Sweat vanished, her hair returned to a neatly
brushed mane. A simple, scarlet summer dress materialized over her skin.
On the other side of the endcap, the hellhawks were seething with resentment and anger. Beyond them was a haze of life which
gave off a scent of icy determination. And Rubra, the ever-present mental background whisper, was radiating satisfaction.
“Damn it!”
Her desktop processor block started shrilling. Data scrawled over its screen. A Strategic Defence alert, and red systems failure
symbols were flashing all over the network schematic.
The high-pitched sound started to cut off intermittently, and the screen blanked out. The more she glared at the block, the
worse the glitches became.
“What’s happening?” Erdal Kilcady asked. Her other bedroom fancy—a gormless twenty-year-old who as far as she could determine
had only one use.
“We’re being attacked, you fool,” she snapped. “It’s those fucking Edenists.” Shit, and her schemes had been progressing beautifully
up until now. The idiot kids believed her recording; they were starting to arrive. Another couple of months would have seen
the habitat population rise to a decent level.
Now this. The constant hellhawk flights must have frightened the Edenists into taking action.
The burn mark on Stanyon’s chest healed over. Clothes sprang up to conceal his body. “We’d better get along to the SD control
centre and kick some butt,” he said.