“I think it might be a good idea to slow down now,” Moyo said in her ear.
She applied the brakes, reducing their speed to a crawl. The other three buses behind matched her caution. Two hundred metres
from the flexing curtain of sunlight she stopped altogether. The cloud base was only four or five hundred metres high here,
hammering on the invisible boundary in perpetual ferment.
Two sets of bright orange barriers had been erected across the road. The first was under the edge of the cloud, sometimes
bathed in red light, sometimes in white; the second was three hundred metres north, guarded by a squad of Royal Marines. Behind
them, several dozen military vehicles were drawn up on the hard shoulder, armoured troop transports, ground tanks, general
communications vehicles, lorries, a canteen, and several field headquarters caravans.
Stephanie opened the bus doors and stepped down onto the road. The thunder was an aggressive growl here, warning outsiders
to keep back.
“What did they do to the grass?” Moyo shouted. Just inside the line of sunlight, the grass was dead, its blades blackened
and desiccated. Already it was crumbling into dust. The dead zone lay parallel to the border of the red cloud as far as the
eye could see, forming a rigid stripe that cut cleanly across every contour.
Stephanie looked along the broad swath of destruction, trees and bushes had been burned to charcoal stumps. “Some kind of
no-man’s-land, I suppose.”
“That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?”
She laughed, and pointed up at the glowing cloud.
“Okay, you got a point. What do you want to do next?”
“I’m not sure.” She resented her indecision immediately. This was the culmination of enormous emotional investment. For all
that, the practicalities of the moment had been ignored. I almost wish we were still travelling, it gave me such a sense of
satisfaction. What have we got after this?
Cochrane, McPhee, and Rana joined them.
“Some terminally unfriendly looking dudes we have here,” Cochrane yelled above the thunder. The marines lining the barrier
were motionless, while more were hurrying from the cluster of vehicles to reinforce them.
“I’d better go and talk to them,” Stephanie said.
“Not alone?” Moyo protested.
“I’ll look a lot less threatening than a delegation.” A white handkerchief sprouted from Stephanie’s hand; she held it up
high and clambered over the first set of barriers.
Lieutenant Anver watched her coming and gave his squad their deployment assignments, sending half of them out to flank the
road and watch for any other possessed trying to sneak over, not that they’d ever get past the satellites. His helmet sensors
zoomed in for a close-up on the woman’s face. She was squinting uncomfortably at the light as she emerged from under the dappled
shadow of the red cloud. A pair of sunglasses materialized on her face.
“Definitely possessed, sir,” he datavised to Colonel Palmer.
“We see that, thank you, Anver,” the colonel replied. “Be advised, the security committee is accessing your datavise now.”
“Sir.”
“There’s no other activity along the firebreak,” Admiral Farquar datavised. “We don’t think she’s a diversion.”
“Go see what she wants, Anver,” Colonel Palmer ordered. “And be very careful.”
“Yes, sir.”
Two of his squad slid a section of the barrier aside, and he stepped forwards. For all that it was only a hundred-metre walk,
it lasted half of his life. He spent the time trying to think what to say to her, but when they stopped a few paces from each
other, all he said was: “What do you want?”
She lowered her hand with the handkerchief and gave him a cautious smile. “We brought some children out. They’re in the buses
back there. I, um.. . wanted to tell you so you wouldn’t. . . you know.” The smile became one of embarrassment. “We weren’t
sure how you’d react.”
“Children?”
“Yes. About seventy. I don’t know the exact number, I never actually counted.”
“Does she mean non-possessed?” Admiral Farquar datavised.
“Are these children possessed?”
“Of course not,” Stephanie said indignantly. “What do you think we are?”
“Lieutenant Anver, this is Princess Kirsten.”
Anver stiffened noticeably. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Ask her what she wants, what the deal is.”
“What do you want for them?”
Stephanie’s lips tightened in anger. “I don’t
want
anything. Not in return, they’re just children. What I’d like is an assurance that you military types aren’t going to shoot
them when we send them over.”
“Oh, dear,” Princess Kirsten datavised. “Apologize to her, Lieutenant, on my behalf, please. And tell her that we’re very
grateful to her and those with her for bringing the children back to us.”
Anver cleared his throat, this wasn’t quite what he expected when he started his lonely walk out here. “I’m very sorry, ma’am.
The Princess sends her apologies for assuming the worst. We’re very grateful to you for what you’ve done.”
“I understand. This isn’t easy for me, either. Now, how do you want to handle this?”
Twelve Royal Marines came back to the buses with her; volunteers, without their armour suits and weapons. The bus doors were
opened, and the children came down. There were a lot of tears and running around in confusion. Most of them wanted a last
kiss and a hug from the adults who had rescued them (Cochrane was especially popular), much to the amazement of the marines.
Stephanie found herself almost in tears as the last batch started off down the broad road, clustering around the big marine;
one of them was even being given a piggyback. Moyo’s arm was around her shoulders to hold her tight.
Lieutenant Anver came over to stand in front of her and saluted perfectly (to which Cochrane managed a quite obscene parody).
He looked badly troubled. “Thank you again, all of you,” he said. “That’s me saying it, I can’t datavise under the cloud.”
“Oh, do take care of the little darlings,” Tina said, sniffing hard. “Poor Analeese has the most dreadful cold, none of us
could cure her. And Ryder hates nuts; I think he’s got an allergy, and—” She fell silent as Rana squeezed her forearm.
“We’ll take care of them,” Lieutenant Anver said gravely. “And you, you take care of yourselves.” He glanced pointedly out
to the firebreak where a procession of vehicles was massing around the barrier to greet the children. “You might want to do
that away from here.” A crisp nod at Stephanie, and he was walking back towards the barrier.
“What did he mean?” Tina asked querulously.
“Wowee.” Cochrane let out a long breath. “We like
did it
, man, we showed the forces of bad vibes not to mess with us.”
Moyo kissed Stephanie. “I’m very proud of you.”
“Ugh,” Cochrane exclaimed. “Don’t you two cats ever stop?”
A smiling Stephanie leaned forwards and kissed him on his forehead, getting hair caught on her lips. “Thank you, too.”
“Will somebody tell me what he meant,” Tina said. “Please.”
“Nothing good,” McPhee said. “That’s a fact.”
“So now what do we do?” Rana asked. “Go round up another group of kids? Or split up? Or settle that farm we talked about?
What?”
“Oh, stay together, definitely,” Tina said. “After everything we’ve done I couldn’t bear losing any of you, you’re my family
now.”
“Family. That’s cosmic, sister. So like what’s your position on incest?”
“I don’t know what we’ll decide,” Stephanie said. “But I think we should take the lieutenant’s advice, and do it a long way
away from here.”
• • •
The spaceplane rose out of Nyvan’s stratosphere on twin plumes of plasma flame, arching up towards its orbital injection coordinate
a thousand kilometres ahead. Submunitions were still peppering space with explosions and decoy flares, while electronic warfare
drones blasted gigawatt pulses at any emission they could detect. Now its reaction drive rockets were on, the spaceplane was
no longer invisible to the residuals of the combat wasp battle.
Lady Macbeth
flew cover a hundred kilometres above it, sensors and maser cannon deployed to strike any missile which acquired lock-on.
The starship had to make continual adjustments to its flight vector to keep the spaceplane within its protective radius. Joshua
watched its drive flaring, reducing velocity, accelerating, switching altitude. Five times its masers fired to destroy incoming
submunitions.
By the time the spaceplane had reached orbit and was manoeuvring to dock, the sky above Nyvan had calmed considerably. Only
three other starships were visible to
Lady Mac
’s sensors, all of them were frigates belonging to local defence forces. None of them seemed interested in
Lady Mac
, or even each other. Beaulieu began a thorough sensor sweep, alert for the inevitable chaotic showers of post-explosion debris
which would make low orbit hazardous for some time to come. Some of the returns were odd, making her redefine the sweep’s
parameters.
Lady Mac’s
sensors shifted their focus away from the planet itself.
Joshua slid cleanly through the hatchway into the bridge. His clothes had dried out in the hot air of the spaceplane’s cabin,
but the dirt and stains remained. Dahybi’s ship-suit was in a similar state.
Sarha gave him an apprehensive glance. “Melvyn?” she asked quietly.
“Not a chance. Sorry.”
“Bugger.”
“You two did a good job up here,” Joshua said. “Well done, that was some fine piloting to stay above the space-plane.”
“Thanks, Josh.”
Joshua looked from Liol, who was anchored to a stikpad by the captain’s acceleration couch, to Sarha, whose expression was
utterly unrepentant.
“Oh, Jesus, you gave him the access codes.”
“Yes, I did. My command decision. There was a war up here, Joshua.”
It wasn’t, he decided, worth making an issue out of, not in view of everything else that was happening. “That’s why I left
you in charge,” he said. “I had confidence in you, Sarha.”
She frowned suspiciously. He
sounded
sincere. “So you got Mzu, then. I hope it was worth it.”
“For the Confederation I suppose it is. For individuals… you’d have to ask them. But then individuals have been dying because
of her for some time now.”
“Captain, please access our sensor suite,” Beaulieu said.
“Right.” He rolled in midair, and landed on his acceleration couch. The images from the external sensor clusters expanded
into his mind. Wrong. They had to be wrong. “Jesus wept!” His brain was already acting in conjunction with the flight computer’s
astrogration program to plot a vector before he’d fully admitted the reality of the tide of rock descending on the planet.
“Prepare for acceleration, thirty seconds—mark. We have to leave.” A fast internal sensor check showed him his new passengers
hurrying towards couches; images superimposed with purple and yellow trajectory plots that wriggled frantically as he refined
their projected trajectory.
“Who did that?” he asked.
“No idea,” Sarha said. “It happened during the battle, we didn’t even know until afterwards. But it sure as hell wasn’t random
combat wasp strikes.”
“I’ll monitor the drive tubes,” Joshua said. “Sarha, take systems coverage, please. Liol, you’ve got fire control.”
“Aye, Captain,” Liol said.
It was a strictly neutral tone. Joshua was satisfied with that. He triggered
Lady Mac’s
fusion drives, bringing them up to a three-gee acceleration.
“Where are we going?” Liol asked.
“Bloody good question,” Joshua said. “For now I just
want us out of here. After that, it rather depends on what
Ione and the agents decide, I expect.”
• • •
There must be someone who knows. One of you.
We know it is real. We know it is hidden.
Two bodies await. A male and a female. Youthful, splendid. Do you hear them? Do you taste them? Pleading for one of you to
enter them. You can. All the riches and pleasures of reality can be yours again. If you have the admission price, one tiny
piece of information. That’s all.
She didn’t hide it by herself. She had help from somebody. Probably many. Were you one?
Ah. Yes. You. You are being truthful. You know.
Come then. Come forwards, come through. We reward you with—
He cried out in wonder and misery as he struggled his way into the victim’s agonized nervous system. There was pain, and shame,
and humiliation to cope with; tragic, terrible pleas from the body’s true soul. One by one, he faced them down, mending the
broken flesh, suppressing and ignoring the protest, until there was only his own shame left. Not so easily abandoned.
“Welcome to the Organization,” said Oscar Kearn. “So, you were part of Mzu’s mission?”
“Yes. I was with her.”
“Good. She’s a clever woman, that Mzu. I’m afraid she’s eluded us once again, thanks to that traitor bitch Barnes. Even so,
only the amazingly resourceful can duck an iron-berg when it’s falling on their heads. I didn’t realize what I was dealing
with before. I don’t suppose she would have helped us even if we had caught her. She’s like that, tough and determined. But
now her luck’s run out. You can tell me, can’t you? You know where the Alchemist is.”
“Yes,” Ikela said. “I know where it is.”
• • •
Alkad Mzu floated into the bridge, accompanied by Monica and Samuel. She acknowledged Joshua with a small twitch of her lips,
then blinked when she saw Liol. “I didn’t know there were two of you.”
Liol grinned broadly.
“Before we all start arguing over what to do with you, Doctor,” a serjeant said. “I’d like you to confirm the Alchemist does
or did exist.”
Alkad tapped her toe on a stikpad beside the captain’s couch, preventing herself from drifting about. “Yes, it exists.And
I built it. I wish to Mary I hadn’t, now, but the past is past. My only concern now is that it doesn’t fall into anybody’s
hands, not yours, and certainly not the possessed.”
“Very noble,” Sarha said, “from someone who was going to use it to kill an entire planet.”