“Another forty minutes. You don’t rush a manoeuvre like this; there are too many sharp rocks out there. I’m going to have
to replace the hull foam as it is; dust abrasion is wearing it down to the bare silicon.” He smiled unconvincingly at Alkad.
“Am I going to be told what our mission is?”
“I require a combat-capable starship, that’s all.”
“I see. And I suppose that is connected with the work you did for the Garissan navy before the genocide?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’ll excuse me if I leave the party before that.”
Alkad thought of the remaining devices in her backpack, and just how tight her security margin had become. “Nobody will force
you to do anything.”
“Nice to hear.” He gave Voi another pointed glance. “For once.”
“What jump coordinate does this course give us?” Alkad asked.
“Nyvan,” he said. “It’s a hundred and thirty light-years away, but I can get a reasonable alignment on it without using up
too much fuel. Voi told me you wanted a planet with military industrial facilities, and wouldn’t ask too many questions.”
• • •
The last of the starships with official flight authorization had departed ninety minutes earlier when Joshua made his way
out of the spaceport. Service and maintenance staff had gone home to be with their families. Utility umbilicals supporting
the remaining starships were becoming less than reliable.
Three agents were loitering in the axial chamber, talking in quiet tones. They were the only people there. Joshua gave them
a blasÉ wave as he and his escort of three serjeants emerged from the commuter lift.
One of the agents frowned. “You’re going back in there?” she asked incredulously.
“Try keeping me from a party.”
He could hear the argument start behind him as the lift doors closed. Holomorph sticker cheerleaders began their chant all
around him.
“If she’s worried enough to question you openly, then the possessed must be gaining ground,” a serjeant said.
“Look, we’ve been over this. I’m just going to check out the gig, and see if Kole has turned up. If she hasn’t, we head straight
back.”
“It would have been much safer if I’d gone alone.”
“I don’t think so.” Joshua wanted to say more, but the lift was probably overloaded with nanonic bugs. He datavised the net
for a channel to
Lady Mac
.
“Yes, Joshua?” Dahybi responded.
“Certain people out here are getting twitchy about the possessed. I want you to monitor the asteroid’s internal systems: transportation,
power, environment, the net, everything. If any of them start downgrading I want to know right away.”
“Okay.”
Joshua glanced at the rigid, expressionless face of the nearest serjeant. Right now he really wanted Ione to confide in, to
be able to ask her opinion, to talk things through. If anyone knew how to handle awkward family, it was her. Some deep-buried
prejudice prevented him from saying anything to the serjeants. “One other thing, Dahybi. Call Liol, tell him to get himself
over to the
Lady Mac
right away. Give him a passenger cabin in capsule C. Don’t let him on the bridge. Don’t give him any access codes for the
flight computer. And make sure you check him for possession when he arrives.”
“Yes, Captain. Take care.”
A datavise couldn’t convey emotional nuances, but he knew Dahybi well enough to guess at the amused approval.
“You accept his claim, then?” Ione asked.
“The DNA profile seems similar to mine,” Joshua said grudgingly.
“Yes, I’d say ninety-seven per cent compatibility is roughly in the target area. It’s not unusual for starship crews to have
extended families spread over several star systems.”
“Thank you for reminding me.”
“If your father was ever anything like you, then it’s possible Liol isn’t your only sibling.”
“Jesus.”
“I’m just preparing you for the eventuality. Kelly Tirrel’s recording has enhanced your public visibility rating by a considerable
factor. Others may seek you out in the same way.”
He pulled an ironic face. “Wouldn’t that be something? The gathering of the Calverts. I wonder if there are more of us than
there are Saldanas?”
“I very much doubt it, not if you include our illegitimates.”
“And black sheep.”
“Quite. What do you intend to do about Liol?”
“I haven’t got a clue. He’s not touching the
Lady Mac
, though. Can you imagine having board meetings every time to decide her next destination? It’s the opposite of everything
I am, not to mention the old girl herself.”
“He’ll probably come to realize this. I’m sure you can come to some arrangement. He appears to be quite smart.”
“The word is smarmy.”
“There’s very little difference between you.”
The lift dropped him off in a public hall a couple of hundred metres from the Terminal Terminus club where the benefit gig
was being played. Not everyone was obeying the governing council’s request to stay put at home. Kids filled the hall with
laughter and shouts. Everyone was wearing a red handkerchief on their ankle.
For a moment Joshua felt disconnected from his own generation. He had formidable responsibilities (not to mention problems);
they were just stimheads sliding around their perpetual circuit from one empty good time to the next. They didn’t understand
the universe at all.
Then a couple of them recognized Lagrange Calvert and wanted to know what it was like rescuing the children from Lalonde,
and had there really been possessed in Bar KF-T? They were peppy, and the girls in the group were giving him the eye. He began
to loosen up; the barriers weren’t so solid after all.
The Terminal Terminus looked like some kind of chasmal junction between tunnels. Big, old mining machines were parked in arching
recesses, their conical, worn-down drill mechanisms jutting out into the main chamber. Obsolete mechanoids clung to the ceiling,
spider-leg waldos dangling down inertly. Drinks were served over a long section of heavy-duty caterpillar track.
A fantasy wormhole squatted in the centre, a rippling gloss-black column five metres wide stretching between floor and ceiling.
Things were trapped inside, undefined creatures who clawed at the distortion effect in desperate attempts to escape; the black
surface bent and distended, but never broke.
“Very tasteful, under the circumstances,” Joshua muttered to a serjeant.
A stage had been set up between two of the mining machines. AV projectors powerful enough to cover a stadium stood on each
side.
One of the serjeants went off to guard an emergency exit. The remaining two stuck by Joshua.
He found Kole standing with a group of her friends under one of the mining machines. Her hair had been woven through with
silver and chrome-scarlet threads, which every now and then made it fan open like a peacock tail.
He paused for a moment. She was so phony; rich without Dominique’s cosmopolitan verve, and absolute trash compared to Louise’s
simple honesty.
Louise.
Kole caught sight of him and squealed happily, kissed him, rubbed against him. “Are you all right? I accessed what happened
after I left.”
He grinned brashly, the legend in the flesh. “I’m fine. My… er, cosmoniks here are a tough bunch. We’ve seen worse.”
“Really?” She cast a respectful eye over the two serjeants. “Are you male?”
“No.”
Joshua couldn’t tell if Ione was annoyed, amused, or plain didn’t care. On second thought, he doubted the latter.
Kole kissed him again. “Come and meet the gang. They didn’t believe I’d hooked you. Mother, I can’t believe I hooked you.”
He braced himself for the worst.
From her vantage point lounging casually on a coolant feed duct a third of the way up the side of a mining machine, Monica
Foulkes watched Joshua greeting Kole’s posse of friends. He knew exactly the attitude to take to be accepted within seconds.
She took a gulp of iced mineral water as her enhanced retinas scanned the young faces below. It was hot wearing the chameleon
suit, but it gave her the skin tone of Ayacucho’s Kenyan-ethnic population; “foreign agents” were about as popular as the
possessed right now. Except Calvert, of course, she thought sorely, he was being greeted like a bloody hero. Her characterization
recognition program ran a comparison against the youngsters she was scanning, and signalled a ninety-five per cent probable
match.
“Damn!”
Samuel (now black-skinned, twenty-five years old, and wearing jazzy purple sports gear) looked up from the base of the mining
machine. “What?”
“You were right. Kole has just introduced him to Adok Dala.”
“Ah. I knew it. He was Voi’s boyfriend up until she dumped him eighteen months ago.”
“Yes yes, I can access the file for myself, thank you.”
“Can you hear what’s being said?”
She glanced down contemptuously. “Not a chance. This place is really filling up now. My audio discrimination programs can’t
filter over that distance.”
“Come down please, Monica.”
Something in his tone halted any protest. She slithered down the pitted yellow-painted titanium bodywork of the mining machine.
“We have to decide what to do. Now.”
She flinched. “Oh, God.”
“Do you believe Adok Dala will know where Voi is?”
“I don’t think so, but there’s no guarantee. And if we snatch Dala now, it isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference as
far as official repercussions are concerned. He’s hardly going to complain about being taken off Ayacucho, is he?”
“You’re right. And it will prevent Calvert from learning anything.”
Joshua’s neural nanonics reported a call from Dahybi. “Two voidhawks from the defence delegation have just left the docking
ledge, Captain. Our sensors can’t see much from inside the bay, but we think they’re keeping station five kilometres off the
spaceport.”
“Okay, keep monitoring them.”
“No problem. But you should know that Ayacucho is suffering localized power failures. They’re completely random, and the supervisor
programs can’t locate any physical problem in the supply system. One of the news studios has gone off-line, as well.”
“Jesus. Start flight prepping
Lady Mac;
I’ll wind things up here and get back to you within thirty minutes.”
“Aye, Captain. Oh, and Liol has arrived. He’s not possessed.”
“Wonderful.”
Kole was still clinging magnetically to his side. No one she’d introduced him to had mentioned Voi. His original idea had
been to ask them about Ikela’s murder and see what was said. But now time was running out. He looked around to find out where
the serjeants were, hoping Ione wasn’t going to make an issue of pulling out. Hell, we gave it our best.
The compere was striding out on the stage, holding her arms out for silence as the rowdy crowd cheered and started catcalling.
She started into her spiel about the Fuckmasters.
“This is Shea,” Kole told him.
It was hard for Joshua to smile; Shea was tall and skinny, almost identical to Voi’s size and height. He datavised his electronic
warfare block to scan her, but she was clean. What he saw was real, not a chameleon suit. It wasn’t Voi.
“This is Joshua Calvert,” Kole boasted, raising her voice against the rising whistle of the giant AV projectors. “He’s my
starship captain.”
Shea’s melancholia became outright distress. She started crying.
Kole gave her an astonished look. “What’s the matter?”
Shea shook her head, lips sealed together.
“I’m sorry,” Joshua said, earnestly sympathetic. “What did I do?”
Shea smiled bravely. “It’s not you. It’s just. . . my boyfriend left this afternoon. He’s captaining a starship, too, and
that reminded me. I don’t know when I’m going to see him again. He wouldn’t say.”
Intuition was starting a major-league riot in Joshua’s skull. The first MF band was strolling onstage. He put a protective
arm around Shea’s shoulders, ignoring Kole’s flash of ire. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. You can tell me about it. You never
know, I might be able to help. Stranger things happen in space.”
He signalled the two serjeants frantically, and turned away from the stage just as the AV projectors burst into life. A thick
haze of coherent light filled the Terminal Terminus. Even though he was looking away, sensations spirited down his nerves;
fragmented signals saturated with crude activant sequences. He felt good. He felt hot. He felt randy. He felt slippery.
A glance back over his shoulder had him sitting on a saddle astride a giant penis, urging it forwards.
Honestly, kids today. When he was younger MF was about the giddy pursuit, how it felt when your partner adored you in return,
or spurned you without reason. Making up and breaking up. The infinite states of the heart, not the dick.
The kids around him were laughing and giggling, joyous expressions on their incredulous faces as the AV dazzle poured down
their irises. They all swayed from side to side in unison.
“Joshua, four Edenists are coming this way,” a serjeant warned.
Joshua could see them in the sparkling light cloud which pervaded the audience. Taller than everyone else, some kind of visor
over their eyes, moving intently through the swinging throng.
He grabbed Shea’s hand tightly. “This way,” he hissed urgently, and veered off towards the mock wormhole in the centre of
the club. One of the serjeants cleared a path, forcing people aside. Frowns and snarls lined his route.
“Dahybi,” he datavised. “Get the rest of the serjeants out of zero-tau, fast. Secure a route through the spaceport from the
axial chamber to
Lady Mac
. I might be needing it.”
“It’s being done, Captain. Parts of the asteroid’s net are crashing.”
“Jesus. Okay, we’ve got the serjeants’ affinity to keep communications open if it goes completely. You’d better keep one in
the bridge with you.”
He reached the writhing black column and looked back. Shea was breathless and confused, but not protesting. The Edenists weren’t
chasing after him. “What. . . ?” Some sort of struggle had broken out over where he’d left Kole’s friends. Two of the tall
agents were pulling an inert body between them. It was Adok Dala, unconscious and shaking, victim of a nervejam shot. The
other pair of agents and someone else were holding back some irate kids. A nerve-jam stick was raised and fired.