Joshua turned his head a little too far, and he was tasting nipple while he slid over dark pigmentation as if he were snowboard
slaloming, leaving a huge trail of glistening saliva behind him. His neck muscles flicked back a couple of degrees, and the
Edenists were retreating, completely unnoticed by the entranced euphoric audience they were shoving their way through. Behind
them, Kole’s friends clung together; those still standing wept uncomprehendingly over those felled by the violence which had
stabbed so unexpectedly into their moment of erotic rapture.
Shea gasped at the scene and made to rush over.
“No,” Joshua shouted. He pulled her back, and she recoiled, as frightened by him as the agents. “Listen to me, we have to
get out of here. It’s only going to get worse.”
“Is it the possessed?”
“Yeah. Now come on.”
Still keeping hold of her hand he slid around the wormhole. It felt like dry rubber against his side, flexing in queasy movements.
“Nearest exit,” he told the serjeant in front of him. “Go.” It began to plough through tightly packed bodies at an alarming
speed. Blissfully unaware people were sent tumbling. Joshua followed on grimly. The Edenists must have wanted Adok Dala for
the same reason he wanted Shea. Had he got the wrong friend? Oh, hell.
The cavern wall was only ten metres ahead of him now, a red circle shining above an exit. His electronic warfare block datavised
an alarm.
Jesus!
“Ione.”
“I know,” the lead serjeant shouted. It drew its machine gun.
“No,” he cried. “You can’t, not in here.”
“I’m not inhuman, Joshua,” the burly figure retorted.
They reached the wall and hurried along to the exit. That was when he realized Kole was still with them.
“Stay here,” he told her. “You’ll be safe with all these people.”
“You can’t leave me here,” she gasped imploringly. “Joshua! I know what’s happening. You can’t. I don’t want that to happen
to me. You can’t let them. Take me with you, for Mary’s sake!”
And she was just a stricken young girl whose broken hair was flapping wildly.
The first serjeant slammed the door open and went through. “I’ll stay here,” the second said. The machine gun was held ready
in one hand. It took out an automatic pistol and held it in the other. “That’s a bonus, these things are ambidextrous. Don’t
worry, Joshua. They’ll suffer if they try and get past me.”
“Thanks, Ione.” Then he was out in the corridor, urging the two girls along. “Dahybi,” he datavised. His neural nanonics reported
they couldn’t acquire a net processor. “Bugger.”
“The other serjeants are securing the spaceport,” the serjeant told him. “And the
Lady Mac
is flight prepped. Everything is ready.”
“Great.” His electronic warfare block was still datavising its alarm. He took his own nine-millimetre pistol out of its holster.
Its operating procedure program went primary.
They came to a crossroads in the corridor. And Joshua wasted a second querying the net on the direction he wanted. Cursing,
he requested the Ayacucho layout he’d stored in a memory cell. There would be too much risk using a lift now; power supplies
were dubious, transport management processors more so. His neural nanonics devised the shortest route to the axial chamber,
it seemed depressingly far.
“This way.” He pointed down the left hand corridor.
“Excuse me,” someone said.
Joshua’s electronic warfare block gave out one final warning, then shut down. He whirled around. Standing ten metres down
the other corridor were a man and a woman, dressed in heavy black leather jackets and trousers with an improbable number of
shiny zips and buckles.
“Run,” the serjeant ordered. It stepped squarely into the middle of the corridor and levelled its compact machine gun.
Joshua didn’t hesitate. Shoving at the girls, he started running. He heard a few heated words being shouted behind him. Then
the machine gun fired.
He took the first turning, desperate to escape from the line of sight. His neural nanonics immediately revised his route.
The corridors were all identical, three metres high, three metres wide, and apparently endless. Joshua hated that, trapped
in a maze and utterly reliant on a guidance program susceptible to the possessed. He wanted to know exactly where he was,
and be able to prove it. Being unaware of his exact location was an alien experience. Human doubt was superseding technological
prowess.
He was looking over his shoulder as he took the next turning, making sure the girls were keeping up and there was no sign
of any pursuit. His peripheral vision monitor program indexed the figure striding down the corridor towards him milliseconds
before his neural nanonics crashed.
It was a man in white Arab robes. He smiled in simple gratitude as Joshua and the girls stumbled to a halt in front of him.
Joshua swung his pistol around, but the lack of any procedural program meant he misjudged its weight. The arc was too great.
Before he could bring it back to line up on the target, a ball of white fire struck his hand.
Joshua howled at the flare of terrible pain as the pistol fell from his grip. No matter how vigorously he waved his arm the
deadly white flame could not be dislodged from its grip around his fingers. Oily stinking smoke spouted out.
“Time to say goodbye to your life,” the smiling possessed said.
“Fuck you.”
He could hear the girls crying out behind him, the wails of their revulsion and horror. Shock was diminishing the pain in
his hand slightly. He could feel the puke rising in his throat as more and more of his flesh charred. His whole right arm
was stiffening. Somewhere behind his assailant a vast crowd of invisible people were whispering all at once. “No.” It wasn’t
a coherent word, just a defiant grunt mangled by his contorted throat muscles. I will not submit to that. Never.
A cascade of water burst out of the corridor’s ceiling to the accompanying sound of a high-pitched siren. The edge of the
lighting panels turned red and started to flash.
Shea was laughing with brittle hysteria as she withdrew her fist from the fire alarm panel. Dots of blood oozed up from her
grazed knuckles. Joshua punched his own hand upwards, straight underneath a nozzle. He roared triumphantly. The white flame
vanished in a gust of steam, and he collapsed down onto his knees, his whole body shaking violently.
The Arab regarded the three of them with a degree of aristocratic annoyance, as if any hint of defiance was unprecedented.
Water splattered on his dark headgear, turning his robe translucent as it clung to his body.
Joshua raised his head against the icy torrent to snarl at his enemy. His right hand was dead now; a supreme crush of coldness
had devoured his wrist. A few spittles of vomit emerged from his mouth before he managed to growl: “Okay, shithead, my turn.”
The Arab frowned as Joshua reached into a pocket with his left hand and brought out Horst Elwes’s small crucifix. He thrust
it forwards.
“Holy Father, Lord of Heaven and the mortal world, in humility and obedience, I do ask Your aid in this act of sanctification,
through Jesus the Christ who walked among us to know our failings, grant me Your blessing in this task.”
“But I am a Sunni Muslim,” the bemused Arab said.
“Eh?”
“A Muslim. I have no belief in your false Jewish prophet.” He raised his arms, palms upwards. The deluge of water from the
nozzles turned to snow. Every flake stuck to Joshua’s ship-suit, smearing him in a coat of slush. Most of his skin was numb
now.
“But I believe,” Joshua ground out through vibrating teeth. And did. The revelation was as shocking as the cold and the pain.
But he’d come to this moment of pure clarity through reason and ordeal. All he knew, all he’d seen, all he’d done; it spoke
to him that there was order in the universe. Reality was too complex for chance evolution.
Medieval prophets were a convenient lie, but something had made sense out of the chaos which existed before time began. Something
started time itself flowing.
“My Lord God, look upon this servant of Yours before me, fallen to a misguided and unclean spirit.”
“Misguided?” The Arab glowered, trickles of static electricity crawling up his robes. “You brain-dead infidel! Allah is the
only true—oh
shit
.”
The serjeant fired, aiming for the Arab’s head.
Joshua drooped limply onto the floor. “That’s always how religious arguments end, isn’t it?” He was only dimly conscious of
the serjeant dragging him out of the downpour. His neural nanonics came back on line, and immediately started erecting axon
blockades. It was a different kind of numbness than the snow had brought, less severe. The serjeant wrapped a medical nanonic
package around his hand. A stimulant program coaxed Joshua’s brain back to full alertness. He blinked up at the three faces
peering down at him. Kole and Shea were clinging together, both of them in a shambles, drenched and stupefied. The serjeant
had taken a bad pounding, deep scorch marks crisscrossed its body, all-too-human blood was bubbling out from crusted wounds.
Joshua climbed slowly to his feet. He wanted to smile reassuringly at the girls, but the will just wasn’t there. “Are you
okay?” he asked the serjeant.
“I’m mobile.”
“Good. What about you two, any damage?”
Shea shook her head timidly, Kole was still sobbing.
“Thanks for helping,” he said to Shea. “That was fast thinking. I don’t know what I would have done without the water. It
was all a little bit too close for comfort. But we’re through the worst now.”
“Joshua,” the serjeant said. “Dahybi says that three of the Capone Organization’s warships have just arrived.”
• • •
Seven Edenists in full body armour were guarding the docking ledge departure lounge. Monica was tremendously glad to see them.
Along with Samuel, she’d been covering their retreat from the Terminal Terminus, no easy duty. There had been three encounters
with the possessed on the way, and the shapeshifting magicians terrified her. Nerves and neural nanonics were hyped to the
maximum. Never once had she given them the opportunity to surrender or back off. Locate and shoot, that was the way to do
it. And she noticed that for all his worthiness and respect for life, Samuel was wired pretty much the same.
The lighting panels were flickering and dimming as the group rushed across the lounge towards the airlock door and the waiting
crew bus outside. Monica waited until the airlock hatch slid shut before taking her combat programs off line. She flicked
the machine gun’s safety catch on, and slowly pulled off her chameleon suit hood. The bus’s cool air felt gloriously refreshing
as it gusted over her sweat-soaked hair.
“Well, that was easy,” she said.
The bus was rolling towards the
Hoya
, the last voidhawk left on the ledge. Nothing else moved on the shelf of smooth dark rock.
“Unfortunately, you might be right,” Samuel said. He was bent over the unconscious form of Adok Dala, checking the boy with
a sensor from a medical block. “Capone’s ships are here.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry. The Duida Consensus has dispatched a squadron of voidhawks to support us. We are in little physical danger.”
An inane impulse made Monica stare out through the bus’s window in search of the Organization ships. She could barely make
out the non-rotational spaceport, an eclipsed crescent with the funereal red mist of the disk swirling around its edges. “We’re
a long way from New California. Is this another invasion?”
“No, there are only three ships.”
“Then why… Oh, God, you don’t think he’s looking for Mzu as well?”
“It is the most obvious possibility.”
They reached the voidhawk, and the bus extended its airlock tube over the upper hull. Despite their situation, Monica glanced
around curiously once she was on board. The crew toroid wasn’t that much different from an Adamist starship’s life-support
capsule in terms of technology; it was a lot roomier, though. Samuel led her around the central corridor to the bridge and
introduced her to Captain Niveu.
“My thanks to
Hoya”
she said, remembering her etiquette.
“Our pleasure, you have been performing a difficult job under extreme circumstances.”
“Tell me about it. What’s happening with the Capone ships?”
“They are accelerating down into the disk, though they have made no threatening moves. The squadron from the Duida habitats
is here, we’re moving out to join them now. What happens next depends on the Capone ships.”
“We’re under way?” Monica asked. The gravity field was rock steady.
“Yes.”
“Are there any electronic sensors I can access?”
“Certainly.”
Monica’s neural nanonics received a datavise from the bridge’s bitek processor array.
Hoya
was already sliding up through the fringes of the disk, like a bird emerging from a rain cloud. Purple and green symbols
outlined the three Capone Organization ships, half a million kilometres away, and heading in towards Ayacucho at a steady
third of a gravity. The squadron of voidhawks was clustered together just outside the top of the disk.
“They’re not in any hurry,” Monica observed.
“They probably don’t wish to appear hostile,” Niveu said. “If it came to a battle with us they would lose.”
“Are you going to allow them to dock?”
Niveu glanced at Samuel.
“Consensus is undecided,” Samuel said. “We don’t have sufficient information yet. To attack them without reason is not an
action we can undertake lightly.”
“They can’t be here on an assault mission,” Niveu said. “Ayacucho has almost fallen now, attacking it would be pointless.
The asteroid’s new masters would probably welcome an alliance with Capone.”
“Destroying them now might be the best course for us all in the long run,” Monica said. “If they walk in, they’ll be able
to squeeze every byte of data from Voi’s friends. And if Voi and Mzu didn’t get off, then we really are up shit creek.”