He smiled and held his arms out wide. A miniature rainbow sprang up out of his palms, arching over his head. The children
laughed and clapped.
“Hey, I was at Woodstock, you know. I helped rule the world for three days. You need the kind of peaceful influence I exert
over the land. I’m a friend to all living things, the unliving, too, now.”
“Oh, hell.”
• • •
Erick still hadn’t activated the life-support capsule’s internal environmental systems. He was too worried what the power
drain would do to the starship’s one remaining functional fusion generator. There certainly wasn’t enough energy stored in
the reserve electron matrix cells to power up the jump nodes.
Ngeuni’s star was a severe blue-white point a quarter of a light-year away. Not quite bright enough to cast a shadow on the
hull, but well above first magnitude, dominating the starfield. His sensor image was overlaid with navigation graphics, a
tunnel of orange circles which seemed to be guiding the
Tigara
several degrees south of the star. After five jumps he was still matching delta-v.
Thankfully, the clipper’s fusion drive was capable of a seven-gee acceleration, and they weren’t carrying any cargo. It meant
he had enough fuel to align the ship properly. Getting back to Golomo was going to be a problem, though.
The flight computer warned him that the alignment manoeuvre was almost complete.
Tigara
was flashing towards the jump coordinate at nineteen kilometres per second. He started to reduce thrust and ordered the fusion
generator to power up the nodes. As soon as the plasma flow increased he started receiving datavised caution warnings. The
confinement field which held the ten-million-degree stream of ions away from the casing was fluctuating alarmingly.
Erick quickly loaded an emergency dump order into the flight computer, linking it to a monitor. If the confinement field fell
below five per cent the generator would shut down and vent.
For some reason he was devoid of all tension. Then he realized his medical program was flashing for attention. When he accessed
it, he saw the packages were filtering out a deluge of toxins and neurochemicals from his bloodstream at the same time as
they were issuing chemical suppressors.
He grinned savagely around the SII suit’s oxygen tube. Neutering his own reflexes at precisely the time he needed them the
most. Too many factors were building up against him. And still it didn’t really bother him, not snug in the heart of his semi-narcotic
hibernation.
The flight computer signalled that the jump coordinate was approaching. Sensors and heat dump panels began to sink down into
their recesses. The main drive reduced thrust to zero. Erick fired the ion thrusters, keeping the
Tigara
on track.
Then the energy patterning nodes were fully charged. Finally he felt a distant sense of relief, and reduced the fusion generator
output. The straining confinement field surged as the plasma stream shrank by ninety per cent inside half a second. Decaying
failsoft components didn’t respond in time. An oscillation rippled along the tokamak chamber, tearing the plasma stream apart.
The
Tigara
jumped.
It emerged deep inside the Ngeuni system; at that instant a perfect inert sphere. The poise was shattered within an instant
as the raging plasma tore through the tokamak’s casing and ripped out through the hull, loosing incandescent swords of ions
in all directions. A chain reaction of secondary explosions began as cryogenic tanks and electron matrices detonated.
The ship disintegrated amid a blaze of radioactive gases and ragged molten debris. Its life-support capsule came spinning
out of the core of the explosion; a silvered sphere whose surface was gashed by veins of black carbon where energy bursts
and tiny fragments had peppered the polished nultherm foam.
As soon as it was clear of the boiling gases, emergency rockets fired to halt the capsule’s wild tumbling motion, a solid
kick into stability. The beacon began to broadcast its shrill distress call.
Like most enterprises mounted by governments and institutions on Nyvan, the Jesup asteroid was chronically short of finance,
engineering resources, and qualified personnel. The rock’s major ore reserves had been mined out a long time ago. Ordinarily,
the revenue would have been invested in the development of the asteroid’s astroengineering industry. But the New Georgia government
had diverted the initial windfall income to pay for more immediate and voter-friendly projects on the ground.
After the ore was exhausted, Jesup spent the next decades limping along both economically and industrially. Fledgling manufacturing
companies shrank back to service subsidiaries and small indigenous armament corporations. Its aging infrastructure was maintained
one degree from breakdown. Of the three planned biosphere caverns only one had ever been completed, leaving a vast number
of huge empty cavities spaced strategically throughout the rock which would have been the kernels of fresh mining activity.
It was when Quinn was striding along one of the interminable bare-rock tunnels linking the discarded cavities that he sensed
the first elusive presence. He stopped so abruptly that Lawrence almost bumped into him.
“What was that?”
“What?” Lawrence asked.
Quinn turned full circle, slowly scanning the dust-encrusted rock of the wide tunnel. Dribbles of condensation ran along the
curving walls and roof, cutting small forked channels through the ebony dust as they generated fragile miniature stalactites.
It was as if the tunnel were growing a fur of cactus spikes. But there was no place for anyone to hide, only the waves of
shadow between the widely spaced lighting panels.
His entourage of disciples waited with nervous patience. After two days of slickly brutal initiation ceremonies the asteroid
now belonged to him. However, Quinn remained disappointed with the number of true converts among the possessed. He had assumed
that they of all people would despise Jesus and Allah and Buddha and the other false Gods for condemning them to an agonizing
limbo. Showing them the path to the Light Bringer ought to have been easy. But they continued to demonstrate a bewildering
resistance to his teachings. Some even interpreted their return to be a form of redemption.
Quinn could find nothing in the tunnel. He was sure he had caught a wisp of thought which didn’t belong to any of the entourage;
it had been accompanied by a tiny flicker of motion, grey on black. First reaction was that someone was sneaking along behind
them.
Irritated by the distraction, he strode off again, his robe rising to glide above the filthy rock floor. It was cold in the
tunnel, his breath turning to snowy vapour before his eyes. His feet began to crunch on particles of ice.
A frigid gust of air swept against him, making an audible
swoosh
. His robe flapped about.
He stopped again, angry this time. “What the fuck is going on here? There’s no environmental ducts in this tunnel.” He held
up a hand to feel the air, which was now perfectly still.
Someone laughed.
He whirled around. But the disciples were looking at each other in confusion. None of them had dared mock his bewilderment.
For a moment he thought of the unknown figure at the spaceport on Norfolk, the powerful swirl of flames he had unleashed.
But that was light-years away, and no one else had escaped the planet except the Kavanagh girl.
“These tunnels are always acting erratically, Quinn,” Bonham said. Bonham was one of the new converts, possessing Lucky Vin’s
body, which he was twisting into a ghoul-form, bleaching the skin, sharpening the teeth, and swelling the eyes. Thick animal
hair was sprouting out of his silver skull. He said he had been born into a family of Venetian aristocrats in the late nineteenth
century, killed before his twenty-seventh birthday in the First World War, but only after having tasted both the decadence
and blind cruelty of the era. A taste which had become a voracious appetite. He had needed no persuading to embrace Quinn’s
doctrines.
“I asked one of the maintenance chappies, and he said it’s because there aren’t any ducts in the tunnels to regulate them
properly. There are all sorts of weird surges.”
Quinn wasn’t satisfied. He was sure he’d sensed someone sneaking about. A dissatisfied grunt, and he was on his way once more.
No further oddities waylaid him before he reached the cavity where one of the teams was working. It was an almost spherical
chamber, with a small flat floor, acting as a junction to seven of the large tunnels. A single fat metal tube hung downwards
from the apex, rattling loudly as it blew out a wind of warm dry air. Quinn scowled up at it, then went over to the knot of
five men working to secure the fusion bomb to the floor.
The device’s casing was a blunt cone, seventy centimetres high. Several processor blocks had been plugged into its base with
optical cables. The men stopped working and stood up respectfully as Quinn approached.
“Did anyone come through here earlier?”
They assured him no one had. One of them was non-possessed, a technician from the New Georgia defence force. He was sweating
profusely, his thoughts a mixture of dread and outrage.
Quinn addressed him directly. “Is everything going okay?”
“Yes,” the technician murmured meekly. He kept glancing at Twelve-T
The gang lord was in a sorry state. Tiny jets of steam spluttered out of his mechanical body parts. Rheumy crusts were building
up around the rim of bone in which his brain was resting, as though candle wax were leaking out. The membrane that clothed
his brain had thickened (as Quinn wished) but was now acquiring an unhealthy green tint. He was blinking and squinting constantly
as he fought the pain.
Quinn followed the man’s gaze with pointed slowness. “Oh, yeah. The most feared gangster on the planet. Real hard-arsed mother
who isn’t gonna believe in God’s Brother no matter what I do to him. Pretty dumb, really. But the thing is, he’s useful to
me. So I let him live. As long as he doesn’t stray too far from me, he keeps on living. It’s sort of like a metaphor, see?
Now, you going to be a hard-arse?”
“No, sir, Mr Quinn.”
“That’s fucking smart.” Quinn’s head came forward slightly from the umbra of the hood to allow a faint light to strike his
ashen skin. The technician closed his eyes to hide from the sight, lips mumbling a prayer.
“Now is this bomb going to work?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a hundred megaton warhead, they all are. Once they’re linked into the asteroid’s net we can detonate them
in sequence. As long as there are no possessed near them, they’ll function properly.”
“Don’t worry about that. My disciples won’t be here when Night dawns in the sky.” He turned back to the tunnel, giving it
a suspicious look. Again he had the intimation of motion, a flicker no larger than the flap of a bird’s wing, and twice as
fast. He was sure that someone had been watching the incident. A spoor of trepidation hung in the air like the scent of a
summer flower.
When he stood at the entrance he could see the line of light panels shrink into distance before a curve took them from sight.
The gentle sound of pattering water was all that emerged. He was half expecting to see that same blank human silhouette which
had appeared at the hangar on Norfolk.
“If you are hiding, then you are weaker than me,” he told the apparently empty shaft. “That means you will be found and brought
before me for judgement. Best you come out now.”
There was no response.
“Have it your way, shithead. You’ve seen what happens to people I don’t like.”
• • •
The rest of Quinn’s day was spent issuing the instructions that would cause Night to fall on the innocent planet below. He
commanded New Georgia’s SD network now. It would be a simple matter for the platforms to interfere with Nyvan’s two other
functional networks, and various national sensor satellites. Under cover of this electronic warfare barrage, spaceplanes would
slide down undetected to the surface. Every nation would be seeded by a group of possessed from Jesup. And Nyvan’s curse of
national antagonism would prevent a unified planetary response to the problem, which was the only response that could ever
stand a chance of working.
The possessed would conquer here, probably with greater ease than anywhere in the Confederation. They were a single force,
knowing nothing of borders and limits.
As for those who would actually be sent down, Quinn chose carefully. A couple of the devout for every spaceplane to make sure
they followed their flight vectors and landed at the designated zone, but the rest were ones for whom only fear and his own
proximity kept in line: unbelievers. It was quite deliberate. Free of his thrall, they would do what they always did, and
seek to possess as many people as they could.
He didn’t care that he would not be there to move among them and bring the word of God’s Brother. Norfolk had shown him that
mistake. Conversion on an individual basis was totally impractical when dealing with planetary populations.
Quinn’s duty, and that of the disciples, was the same as all priests; they were simply to prepare the ground for God’s Brother
to walk upon, to build the temples and prepare the sacrament. It was He who would bring the final message, showing all the
light.
The spaceplanes were only half of the scheme. Quinn was preparing to dispatch inter-orbit ships to the three derelict asteroids
under the command of his most trusted followers. Those worthless rocks had now become a cornerstone in his plans to advance
the Night.
• • •
It was after midnight when Quinn returned to the tunnel. This time he was by himself. He stood motionless under the arching
entrance for a full minute, allowing whoever was there to notice him. Then he raised a hand and fired a single bolt of white
fire at the electrical cable which ran along the crest of the tunnel. All the light panels went out.
“Now we will know which of us is the master of darkness,” he shouted into the black air. He searched with his mind alone as
he walked forwards, aware of the rock as an insubstantial pale grey tube around him. It was all that existed in a blank universe.