“He’s in the corridor. I think he’s seen the trolley. Stopping just outside.”
Jed closed his eyes, shaking badly. A possessed would be able to sense his thoughts. They would all be hauled off to face
Capone. He would be tortured and Beth would get sent to the brothel.
I should have left the door open, that way I could have sprung out and surprised them.
“Hello?” a voice called. It was very high pitched, almost a girl.
“Is that them?” he whispered to his suit mike.
“Yes. He’s examined the trolley. Now by the door.”
The locking clamp moved, slowly hinging back. Jed stared at it in dread, desperate for one last hit from the suit’s medical
module.
If the laser doesn’t work, I’ll kill myself, he decided. Better that…
“Hello?” the high voice sounded timid. “Is someone there?”
The door started to open.
“Hello?”
Jed shouted in fury, and jumped from the wall. Holding the laser pistol in a double handed grip, he spun round and fired out
into the corridor. Webster Pryor was saved by two things: his own diminutive height, and Jed’s quite abysmal aim.
The red strand of laserlight was quite brilliant compared to the corridor lighting. It left Jed squinting against the glare,
trying to see what he was shooting at. Blue-white flames and black smoke were squirting out of the corridor wall opposite,
tracing a meandering line in the composite. Then the smoke stopped, and a spray of molten metal rained down. He was slicing
through a conditioning duct.
He did—just—see a small man dive to the floor at his feet as the laser slashed round in search of a target. There was a yell
of panic, and someone was screaming: “Don’t shoot me don’t shoot me!” in a high pitched voice.
Jed yelled himself. Confused all to hell what was happening. Tentatively, he took his finger off the laser’s trigger. Metal
creaked alarmingly as the duct sagged around the dripping gap in its side. He looked down at the figure in the white jacket
and black trousers grovelling on the floor. “What in Christ’s name is going on? Who are you?”
A terrified face was looking up at him. It wasn’t a bloke, just a kid. “Please don’t kill me,” Webster pleaded. “Please. I
don’t want to be one of them. They’re horrible.”
“What’s happening?” Rocio asked.
“Not sure,” Jed mumbled. He took a look down the corridor. All clear.
“Was that a laser?”
“Yeah.” He aimed it down at Webster. “Are you possessed?”
“No. Are you?”
“Course bloody not.”
“Well I didn’t know,” Webster wailed.
“How did you get a weapon?” Rocio asked.
“Shut up! Jeeze, give me a break. I just got one, okay?”
Webster was frowning through his tears. “What?”
“Nothing.” Jed hesitated, then put the laser pistol back in his utility pocket. The kid looked harmless; though the waiter’s
jacket with its brass buttons which he wore, along with his oil-slicked hair, was a little odd. But he was more scared than
anything else. “Who are you?”
The story came out in broken sentences, punctuated by sobs. How Webster and his mother had been caught up in Capone’s take-over.
How they’d been held in one of the asteroid’s halls with hundreds of other women and children. How some Organization woman
came searching them out from the rest. How he’d been separated from his mother and put to work serving drinks and food for
the gangster bosses and a peculiar, very pretty, lady. How he kept hearing Capone and the lady mention his father’s name,
and then glance in his direction.
“What are you doing down here?” Jed asked.
“They sent me for some food,” Webster said. “The cook told me to find out if there were any swans left in storage.”
“This is the spacecraft section,” Jed said. “Didn’t you know?”
Webster sniffled loudly. “Yes. But if I look everywhere, I could stay away from them for a while.”
“Right.” He straightened, and found one of the small camera lenses. “What do we do?” he asked, flustered by the boy’s tale.
“Get rid of him,” Rocio said curtly.
“What do you mean?”
“He’s a complication. You’ve got the laser pistol, haven’t you?”
Webster was looking up at him passively, eyes red-rimmed from the tears. All mournful and beat; the way not so long ago Jed
had looked at Digger when the pain was at its worst.
“I can’t do that!” Jed exclaimed.
“What do you need, a note from your mother? Listen to me, Jed, the second he steps within range of a possessed, they’ll know
something’s happened to him. Then they’ll come looking for you. They’ll get you, and Beth, and the girls.”
“No way. I can’t. I just can’t. Not even if I wanted to.”
“So what are you going to do instead?”
“I don’t know! Beth? Beth, have you been switched on to all this?”
“Yes, Jed,” she replied. “You’re not to touch that boy. We’ve got plenty of food, now, so bring him back with you. He can
come with us.” “Really?” Rocio enquired disdainfully. “And where’s his spacesuit? How’s he supposed to get out to me?”
Jed looked at Webster, thoroughly disconcerted. This whole situation was just getting worse and worse. “For Christ’s sake,
just get me out of this.”
“Stop being an arsehole,” Beth snapped. “It’s bloody obvious, you’ll have to steal one of the vehicles. There’s plenty of
them about. I can see some of them docked to the airlocks close to where you went in. Take one and drive it over to us.”
Jed wanted to curl up into a ball and take a decent hit. A vehicle! In full view of this whole nest of possessed.
“Please Jed, come back,” Gari entreated. “I don’t like it here without you.”
“All right, doll,” he said, too bushed to kick up an argument. “On my way.” He rounded on Webster. “And you’d better not be
any trouble.”
“You’re going to take me away?” the boy asked in wonder.
“Sort of, yeah.”
Jed didn’t bother about collecting any more food from the shelves. He just started pushing the trolley, making sure Webster
was in sight the whole time.
Rocio reviewed the camera images and schematic data available to him, and quickly devised a route to one of the docking ledge
vehicles. It meant the two of them taking a lift up to the lounge level, which he didn’t like. But previewing enabled him
to hurry them past the sections where crews were still working without incident.
The vehicle he’d chosen for them was a small taxi with a five-seater cab. Large enough to take the trolley, and simple enough
for Jed to drive. He was back at the
Mindori
three minutes after disengaging from the airlock. It actually took him longer than that to match the taxi’s docking tube
with the starship’s life support module hatch. Once the tube was locked and pressurized, Beth, Gari, and Navar came rushing
in to greet the returning hero. Beth put her hands on either side of his face and gave him a long kiss. “I’m proud of you,”
she said.
That wasn’t something she’d ever told him before, and she didn’t hand out platitudes, either. Of course, today had been full
of not merely the unusual, but the positively weird. However, the words left him warm and uncertain. The moment was only slightly
spoilt when the two younger girls started reading labels and found out what he’d brought back.
______
It had taken the Monterey Hilton’s head chef over three hours to prepare the meal. A dozen or so senior lieutenants and their
partners had been invited to an evening with Al and Jezzibella. Pasta with a sauce that was at least as good as they used
to make on Earth (supervised by Al), swan stuffed with fish, fresh vegetables boosted up from the planet that afternoon, desserts
heavy on chocolate and calories, matured cheeses, the finest wines New California could produce, the fanciest liqueurs. As
well as the food, there was a five-piece band, and some showgirls for later. Guests would also receive items of twenty-four
carat jewellery (genuine, not energistic baubles), personally selected by Al himself. The evening was intended to be memorable.
Nobody left Al Capone’s party without a smile on their face. His reputation as a wild and exuberant host had to be preserved,
after all.
What Al didn’t know was that Leroy had to be taken off Organization administration duties in order to make the arrangements.
He’d spent over an hour calling senior Organization personnel to facilitate the ingredients and people necessary to make the
party work. That bothered the obese manager. The picture he and Emmet were getting from various lieutenants and city bosses
down on the surface was a smooth one, things falling neatly into place, people doing as they were told. But not so long ago,
when the fleet left for Arnstat, Leroy had put together a grand ball in under a week. A time when the planet and high-orbit
asteroids had fought for the privilege of supplying Al with the best of anything they had. This party was a fraction of that
scale and a multiple of the effort.
However, despite the grudging donations, the Nixon suite’s dining room was an impressive and dramatic example of lavishness
when Leroy finally arrived, immaculate tuxedo straining around his huge frame. One of the more lissom girls from the brothel
was on his arm; the pair of them a gross example of human glandular divergence. Heads turned to look at him when they arrived
together. Silent calculations were quickly performed when a smiling Al greeted them, and handed the girl a diamond necklace
which even her cleavage couldn’t devour. No snide remarks were ventured, though the mind-tones said it all.
Monterey was out of the umbra again, heading into the light. Outside the broad window, New California’s green and blue crescent
gleamed warmly. It was a sumptuous atmosphere for the pre-dinner drinks, and the atmosphere was suitably relaxed. Waiters
circulated with gold and silver trays of canapÉs, making sure no glass was ever in danger of heading towards half empty. Conversation
flowed, and Al circulated with grace, showing no favouritism.
His mood didn’t even falter when Kiera showed up an easy fifteen minutes after everyone else. She wore a provocatively simple
sleeveless summer dress of some thin mauve fabric, cut to emphasise her figure. On a girl of her body’s age it would have
been charmingly guileless, on her it was a declaration of all-out fashion war against the other females in the room. Only
Jezzibella in the ever-classic little black cocktail number looked snazzier. And by the bright cherub’s smile she used to
welcome Kiera, she knew it.
“Al, darling,” Kiera’s smile was wide and sweltering as she kissed Al’s cheek. “Great party, thanks for the invite.”
For a second, Al worried her teeth might be going for his jugular. Her thoughts bristled with an icy superiority. “Wouldn’t
be the same without you,” he told her. Jeeze, and to think he’d once considered her a possible lay. His wang would get so
cold inside her, it’d snap clean off.
The notion made him shiver. He beckoned to one of the waiters. The guy must have been in his nineties, one of those dignified
old coots that were perfect as butlers. Young Webster should have been doing this job, Al thought, it would have made for
a cuter image. But he hadn’t seen the boy all evening. The old man wobbled forwards obediently, carrying a tray of black velvet
with a shimmering sapphire cobweb necklace resting on it.
“For me?” Kiera simpered. “Oh, how lovely.”
Al took the necklace off the tray and slowly fastened it round her neck, ignoring her lecherous smirk at his proximity.
“It’s so nice to see you here,” Jezzibella said, clinging to Al’s arm. “We weren’t sure if you could spare the time.”
“I’ve always got time for Al.”
“That’s nice to hear. Keeping the hellhawks in line must take up a big part of your day.”
“I don’t have any trouble coping. They know I’m in charge of them.”
“Yeah, you got some interesting moves, there,” Al said. “Emmet was full of praise for what you did. Said it was smart. Coming
from him, that’s quite a compliment. I’ll have to remember them in case I’m ever in a similar situation.”
Kiera removed a champagne saucer from one of the waiters, her gaze searched the room like a targeting laser until she found
Emmet. “You won’t be in a similar situation, Al. I’m covering that flank for you. Very thoroughly.”
Jezzibella morphed into her hero-worshipping early-teens persona. “Covering for Al?” her high girlish voice piped.
“Yes. Who else?”
“Come on, Jez,” Al grinned in mock-rebuke. “There ain’t no one else in the market for hellhawks, you know that.”
“I do.” Jezzibella looked up adoringly at him, and sighed.
“And without me, there’s no reason for New California to keep supporting them,” Al said.
Kiera’s attention moved back from Emmet. “Believe me, I’m very aware of everyone’s position. And their worth.”
“That’s nice,” Jezzibella said blandly.
“Enjoy your drink, babe,” Al said, and patted Kiera’s arm. “I got a small announcement to make before we sit down to eat.”
He marched over to Emmet, and signalled the head waiter to bang a gong. The room fell silent, people picking up on the focused
excitement in Al’s mind. “This ain’t the usual kind of speech to make at table. I ain’t got no stag jokes, for a start.”
Faithful smiles switched on all around. Al took another sip of champagne—damn, but he wanted a shot of decent bourbon. “All
right, I ain’t gonna bullshit around with you. We got problems with the fleet, on account of it ain’t got nowhere to go. You
know how it is, we gotta keep momentum going or the boys’ll go sour on us. That right, Silvano?”
The brooding lieutenant nodded scrupulously. “Some of the guys are getting close to the boil, sure, Al. Nothing we can’t keep
a lid on.”
“I don’t wanna keep no fucking lid on nothing. We gotta give the bastards something to do while we build up stocks of antimatter.
We can’t take over no planet again, not for a while. So we’re gonna hit the Confederation from another angle. That’s what
I got for you, something new. This way we cause them one fuck of a lot of damage, and don’t get hurt ourselves. And we got
Emmet here to thank for that.” He put his arm round the Organization’s reluctant technology expert, and gave him a friendly
hug. “We’re gonna launch some raids on other planets, and break through their space fort defences. Once we’ve done that, we
can sling a whole load of our guys down to the surface. Tell them, Emmet.”