“That last convoy we sent to the antimatter station just made it back. Thing is, the Navy was there waiting for them. They
blew it up, Al. We’re not going to get any more antimatter, not ever.”
“Jesus H Christ!” Al’s fist thumped the table, bouncing the crockery. Three slim scars throbbed white on his cheek. “How the
hell did they find out? Ain’t
nothing
we do more careful than sending the convoy to the station. Did the last lot get followed?”
“I don’t know, Al. The frigates’ll dock in another ninety minutes; maybe the captains’ll tell us more.”
“They’d fucking better.” Al’s fists clenched. He stared at the starfield outside the conservatory.
Leroy hesitated, glancing at Jezzibella. She inclined her head silently to the door. It was all the permission Leroy needed;
he ducked his head at Al, and shifted himself the hell out of there as fast as his thick legs would allow. Jezzibella waited
patiently, not saying anything. By now she was well used to the cycle of Al’s moods.
After a minute in which he could have been frozen, Al roared: “Fuck it!” and smashed a fist down on the table again. This
time it had his energistic power behind the blow. The iron bent alarmingly. Plates, jam pots, cups, and the vase went sliding
down the new valley to crash together along the fold. He stood up fast as the boiling coffee splashed onto the floor with
the lilies. His chair legs caught on the tiling. “FUCK!” Al spun round and kicked the chair, sending it flying into the curving
sapphire window. Libby whimpered in fright, cradling the milk jug as if it alone could protect her. Jezzibella sat back, holding
on to the coffee cup she’d saved. Her expression was strictly neutral.
“Goddamn motherfucking shit-eating bastards! That was
my
goddamn station.
Mine
.” He put both hands under the buckled table and shoved it upwards. The entire thing went somersaulting along the conservatory.
Crockery tumbled away to smash against the floor. Libby cowered as one of the heavy metal legs flashed centimetres above the
bun of her grey hair. “Nobody takes my property away from me. No Body! Don’t they know who the fuck they’re dealing with here?
I’m not some chickenshit small-time loser pirate! I am Al goddamn Capone. I’ve got a fleet that kicks the shit out of whole
planets, for Christ’s sake. Are they fucking insane? I’ll blow that whole stinking pennyass navy of theirs out of the goddamn
water. That knucklehead Ruski admiral is gonna get a baseball rammed so far up his ass he’ll be pitching it out of his mouth.”
“Space,” Jezzibella said firmly.
“What?”
Al whirled round and bellowed at her. “What did you fucking say to me?”
“You’ll blow them out of space. Not water. We’re not on Earth now, Al.”
He pulled a fist back. It shook violently as he held it over her. Then he swung round and punched one of the tall aquariums.
The glass shattered. Water and a shoal of long purple fish poured out of the big hole, splattering the hem of his robe.
“Shit. Goddamn.” He danced backwards, trying to keep his house slippers out of the water.
Jezzibella calmly lifted her feet off the tiles as the tide swirled round her chair. Fish started wriggling frantically over
the mosaic, their movements skidding them against the planters. “Did you have antimatter when you started?”
Al was watching the fish in mild perplexity; as if he couldn’t quite understand where they’d come from. “What?” he demanded.
“You heard.” She deliberately looked away from him, and gave Libby a gracious smile. “Go and fetch a bucket, or something,
there’s a dear.”
“Yes, poppet,” Libby said nervously. She scurried away.
“You frightened her,” Jezzibella accused.
“Fuck her,” Al said irritably. “What did you say about antimatter?”
“First off, we’ve still got tonnes of the stuff. Think how many convoys got through.”
“Tonnes?”
“Alright, not tonnes, but certainly kilograms. Work it out if you don’t believe me: one kilogram equals two and a fifth pounds.
So the fleet and the SD network still has more than enough to wipe the floor with any Confederation Navy task force stupid
enough to try its luck against New California. Then there’s Kingsley Pryor. You haven’t forgotten him, have you?”
Al stopped his mental arithmetic. He was actually very good at it, a hangover from the days when he was working as an accountant
in Baltimore. Jez was right again, they had got a healthy stash of the superbomb material. And no he hadn’t forgotten Kingsley,
exactly, it was just a long time since they set him loose on his clandestine assignment. “That flaky asshole? I’ve written
him off. Christsake, it’s been too long.”
“No it hasn’t. He’s a courier, not a missile. He’ll get there eventually.”
“Could be.”
“Will be, and then you’ve won. Once the Confederation’s been broken, you don’t have to worry about New California being hauled
back here.”
“Could be,” he sighed. “But we ain’t going to get any more antimatter. Hell, Jez, if they send two task forces, we’re up shit
creek.”
“They won’t. Believe me. It’s a political impossibility. So we’re back to my original question. You didn’t have antimatter
when you started out, and you still managed to take over this planet. Antimatter was a beautiful bonus, Al. And you used it
perfectly. You’ve not only got the Confederation public terrified of you, but with those infiltration flights you’ve weakened
them physically. Twenty-five planets seeded. That’s
crippled
their economies and leadership. They can’t challenge you on your home ground. No way. And that’s what really counts.” She
extended her legs, and rested her heels on one of the two remaining chairs. “We’re never going to see Navy warships outside
this window. Not now. You’re secure, Al. You’ve made it clean. You’ve dug the moat to keep those bastards out, now concentrate
on cementing what you’ve conquered. Don’t let those moaning weaklings who claim to be your friends chip away at the Organization.”
“God damn, you’re beautiful.” He splashed through the thin runnels of water to kiss her. She smiled up at him, and used a
forefinger to tickle under his chin.
“The guys are going to go apeshit about losing the station.”
“They’re going to be frightened, that’s all,” she said. “Just show them they don’t have to be, that you’re in charge of the
situation. They need that reassurance. They need you, Al, no one else can hold things together.”
“You’re right. I’ll call the senior lieutenants in. Spin them some bullshit, and kick ass.”
Her hand curled round the back of his neck. “It can wait an hour.”
______
Al buckled down on his disapproval when he arrived at the Chiefs of Staff office. No point in biting people’s balls off before
they’d even started the meeting. It was just—he couldn’t help remembering what the plush office had looked like the first
time they’d used it. Tidy and gleaming, with coffee served from a silver pot into elegant china. Now, it was suffering from
the general tide of crap washing through Monterey. Without mechanoids, nothing was being cleaned, let alone polished. There
were plates and crumpled sachets on the table, dating back three or four meetings; cups with mould growing in the bottom.
No one could be bothered to take them back to the nearest canteen.
It wasn’t good. Not at all. Jez was right. He had to consolidate what he’d got. Make things function smoothly again. Like
it all had at the start.
Kiera was last to arrive. That was getting to be a habit. Al couldn’t work out if she was doing it to annoy him, or to make
everyone take notice of her. She took her place halfway down the side of the table, between Patricia and Leroy. Al performed
his own theatre by getting up again and refilling his coffee cup from the wheezing espresso machine.
“Hey, Leroy, where’s Webster?” Al asked suddenly. “He should be dishing this stuff out.”
The manager broke off his murmured conversation with Patricia and glanced round the office in surprise. “Kid’s probably skiving
off.”
“Yeah? I ain’t seen him about for a while. How come?” Now he thought about it, Al couldn’t remember the last time the boy
had been in attendance. It was goddamn typical of the sloppy way things were being run these days. No hostage was more important
than Webster Pryor; he was the only person who could make Kingsley Pryor go through with the assignment.
Leroy took out his pocket block and typed quickly, summoning up staff rotas. The results made him uneasy, which everyone was
very aware of. “He’s down in the kitchens, I think. That was his last assignment, helping the chef. His supervisor hasn’t
reported back since.”
Al sat down and stirred his coffee. “Silvano, where’s the kid?”
The morose lieutenant’s scowl deepened. “I don’t fucking know.”
“It’s your job to fucking know. Je-zus, I put you in charge of keeping people in order, and you can’t even look after a brat.
You know what’s riding on keeping Webster in line. He’s more important than all the other hostages put together.”
“Sure, Al. I’ll find him.”
“You’d better. Fuck me, this is goddamn typical of how slack things are getting up here.” He took a sip of coffee, making
sure his temper sank back. “Okay, are you guys all up to speed on what’s happened with the antimatter station?” By the way
everyone mumbled and avoided his eye he guessed they were. “Well don’t all make out like it’s the end of the world. It ain’t.
We just about achieved what we set out to do. Dwight, how many planets have we screwed now?”
The fleet commander flushed as everyone concentrated on him. “Seventeen confirmed infiltrations, Al. We’re waiting for another
two flights to get back.”
“Nineteen planets.” Al grinned round the lieutenants. “Plus Arnstat. Not bad. Not bad at all. We’ve kicked so much shit into
the Navy’s face they can’t even see us now. And if they do try a raid… What’ll happen, Emmet? We still got what it takes to
see them off?”
“No problem, Al. The SD platforms are all armed with antimatter, along with half the fleet. The only Navy ships that’ll visit
New California for a rumble are the ones on a suicide mission.”
“Glad to hear it. You all hear that, too?” He searched round, trying to spot any major-league dissenters with his ethereal
senses as they all swore they heard and approved. There was the obvious ones; Kiera with her cool contempt, the rest were
just jittery, or, like Silvano, sullen and resentful. But so far he was carrying it. “Okay, so we’ve done what we set out
to when we walked into City Hall. We got us an entire planet, along with a haul of space factories. And the important thing
is, we took out the nearest opposition. This planet is a fucking fortress now. That means we can ease up on watching our backs,
and get on with running this shebang properly. Leroy, how’s the food situation down on the surface?”
“Nobody’s starving, Al. The farms aren’t producing as much as they did before. But they are producing. I think we can get
them back up to the old levels if the lieutenants on the ground applied some pressure. We need to motivate them.”
“Okay. So food is something we can improve if we had the time. Mickey, your boys jiving you, or are they marching round like
a bunch of krauts whenever you give the word?”
Mickey Pileggi licked at the beads of sweat that had suddenly erupted on his upper lip. “I got them under control, Al. Yeah.
Sure thing.”
“Mickey, you’re full of crap. This whole fucking joint is going down the pan. We’ve been humping away at the Confederation
so bad, we ain’t noticed the rain coming in.”
“That’s what you wanted.”
Al stopped in full flow, hauling back on his anger. He’d just been getting nicely into his spiel. “Kiera, stop being such
a ballbuster. I did what I had to to protect us. Ain’t nobody here gonna argue with that.”
“I’m not arguing, Al. I’m saying the same thing as you. We are where we are, because this is where you’ve brought us.”
“You want to be somewhere else right now?”
“No.”
“Then shut the fuck up. I’m telling you, all of you; now is when we start getting things working properly again. You gotta
start keeping tabs on the soldiers under your command, else everyone’s gonna finish up going AWOL like Webster. And that way,
we wind up in deep shit. We gotta have things working smoothly around here again. If you don’t start exerting some proper
discipline then the whole Organization’s gonna fall apart. And if it goes down, then we go down with it.”
“Al, the Organization is set up to keep the fleet working,” Kiera said.
“Hey, fucking lady Einstein, you just worked that out for yourself, or did one of the kids from the gym explain it when he
was banging you?” Al chuckled loudly, encouraging the others to join in.
“I’ve always known it. I just wondered if you did.”
Al’s humour faded out. “What are you getting at?”
“The only reason we need the fleet is if New California remains in this universe.”
“Aw shit, not this crap again. Don’t you get it? If we leave, then the Confederation longhairs are going to be free to dream
up some way of snatching us back. We have to stay here, it’s the only way we can see what’s coming.”
“And if you see something like that coming at you, Al, what are you going to do about it? A technology powerful enough to
pull a planet back from the other side of the beyond. Launch a combat wasp at it? Believe me, if the Confederation ever gets
to be that powerful, then we don’t stand a chance. But I don’t think they’ll ever learn how to do anything like that. We can
do it because we’ve got the devil’s own power charging us up. No chunk of machinery can challenge that. If we leave, then
I say we’re going to be a hell of a lot safer there than we are here.”
There was an itch in Al’s palm, running across his skin exactly where he gripped the handle of his baseball bat. He held off
from making it real. Her talk about the devil being behind them made him uncomfortable. A Catholic by birth, he didn’t like
examining the implications of what he was now, nor why. “We ain’t pinning our future on what you
think
might be right, sister,” he growled. “If we want a certainty, then we stay right here.”