“I’m leaving now,” Kingsley said in a smoothly reasonable tone. “Be sensible. Move aside.”
“Silvano won’t like this,” one said.
“Then he should tell me in person. It’s not your job.” He concentrated on the door, visualising it swinging open.
They tried to prevent it, focusing their own power on keeping it shut. A black magic version of arm wrestling.
Kingsley laughed as the door crashed open. He looked from one gangster to the other, eyebrow arched in mocking challenge.
Unopposed, he stepped through, and took Clarissa’s hand.
Behind him, one of the gangsters picked up an ivory telephone and dialled furiously.
______
Gerald walked cautiously along the corridor, pausing by each door to discover if anyone was inside. It took a lot of Loren’s
attention just to make sure his legs moved in a regular motion. The state of his mind had horrified his wife; thoughts disjointed,
personality retarded to a childlike confusion, memories becoming fainter and difficult to recall. Only his emotions remained
at their adult strength, unmollified by reason and consideration. They pummelled what was left of his rationality with the
sharp peaks of extreme states. He experienced fear, never mild anxiety; shame not embarrassment.
She was constantly having to calm and soothe, offering the kind of persistent encouragement longed for by every child. Her
presence was a comfort to him, he kept talking to her, a stream of consciousness drivel she found highly distracting.
He was in bad physical shape, too. The crude injuries Kiera’s goons had inflicted were easy enough to heal with energistic
power. But his body remained perpetually cold, and there was a nasty sharp ache behind his temples which even energistic power
couldn’t banish entirely. What he needed was a week of proper sleep, a month of good meals, and a year on a psychiatrist’s
couch. It would have to wait.
They were somewhere inside the docking ledge spaceport which Kiera had taken over for herself and her fraternity. Cabal Centre.
Except it was virtually deserted. Apart from the two goons she’d killed, she’d seen only three other possessed. None of them
had paid her any attention, hurrying along with fraught minds to obey whatever orders they’d received. The lounges and halls
were all empty.
Loren entered the main lounge, almost familiar with the bland decorations and subdued furniture. She’d seen this place often
enough from the beyond. Kiera’s haunt.
Gerald’s hand ran over the woolly fabric of the couch. Marie had sat on it for hours, talking to her fellow conspirators.
The coffee machine; she’d had that brought in along with fine china. It was bubbling away, filling the lounge with its aromatic
scent. His eyes moved fast across the door to her bedroom. The men she’d taken in there.
Loren tried asking the souls of the beyond where she was. But the agitation and unrest created by Arnstat was snarling up
their bitter cacophony even more than usual. There were some glimpses of a female shape. Possibly her. Running with a group
of people along an unknown corridor.
The face was less like Marie’s than it used to be.
Loren swore viciously. To have come this far. She and Gerald enduring horrors greater than anyone knew existed. To have prevailed
through all that. To be
so
close. Whatever omnipotent entity had designed the beyond must surely have come up with the concept of fate as well.
She could feel Gerald starting to crumple in utter dismay as the prospect of reclaiming their daughter started to recede once
again. It will not happen, she promised him.
As she moved across the lounge she saw a hellhawk on its pedestal outside. Gerald’s surprise halted her as he recognised the
Mindori
’s naked form. Platforms and mobile gantries were ranged up against its cargo holds, each one surrounded by bright floodlights.
Maintenance crews in sleek black SII spacesuits were installing bulky equipment modules, mating their power and coolant lines
to the spacecraft’s existing utility points. Though she couldn’t understand any of the activity, Loren was confident they
now had an escape route when the time came. Providing that time was soon.
She left the lounge and descended one level. This was the engineering section, though none of its workforce had spent much
time on internal upkeep recently. Lightpanels along the corridor roof were a feeble yellow; a few of the air ducts buzzed
irritably as they blew out erratic streams of air, but most were still. The only clue it wasn’t entirely abandoned came from
a near-subliminal humming thrown out by heavy machinery. Loren swivelled round trying to guess the direction, curious about
what could be functioning at such a pace when nobody else was around.
When she finally located the guilty door and opened it, she emerged into a vast maintenance shop that had been converted into
a cybernetic factory. Rows of industrial machinery were pounding away with furious intent, hammering, drilling, and cutting
components out of raw metal. Crude conveyer belts had been set up between them, carrying the freshly minted chunks of metal
to assembly tables at one end. Over two dozen non-possessed workers were employed building machine guns. They were stripped
to the waist, their skin gleaming with sweat from the unfiltered heat given off by the machinery.
None of it really registered with Gerald, while Loren looked round in complete confusion. She walked over to one of the non-possessed
workers.
“Hey! You. What the hell are these for?”
The man looked up in shock, then bowed his head. “They’re guns,” he grunted sullenly.
“I can see that, but what are they for?”
“Kiera.”
It was all the answer she was going to get from him. Loren picked up one of the guns, her hands slipping on the fine spray
of protective oil. Neither she nor Gerald knew much about weapons outside of a didactic course they’d both taken to handle
the laser hunting rifle they were allowed on the homestead. Even so, this looked strange. She watched one being put together.
Its firing mechanism was too large, and the barrel was lined with some kind of composite.
Memories which belonged to neither of them foamed away behind Gerald’s eyes. Memories of mud and pain. Of dark humanoid monsters
armed with blazing machine guns, advancing with deadly inexorability out of the grey rain.
Mortonridge. Kiera was building the kind of weapons the Confederation had used at Mortonridge. Against the possessed!
Loren looked round the factory again, thoroughly unnerved by what she was seeing. The production rate must run into hundreds
a day. She was surrounded by non-possessed churning out the one weapon that could blast her back to the beyond in a second.
If they had any ammunition.
She checked over the gun she was holding, wiping off the surplus oil with a tissue. Satisfied it was fully functional, she
left the factory and started hunting for the second one. It wouldn’t be too far away.
______
Monterey was twenty kilometres away; Cameron’s approach made it look as though the asteroid was moving to eclipse New California.
Sliding across the crescent as it expanded in the promenade deck’s big window. The flight path, coming in at ninety degrees
to the rotation axis made it look as though the rock was sprouting a glittery metallic mushroom straight up. That changed
as Cameron curved round above the counter-rotating spaceport, and started to slide in parallel to the spindle. The docking
ledge was directly ahead, a deep circular gully chiselled into the rock, with tiny brilliant lights on one side producing
wide circles of illumination on the other. Orientation shifted again as the hellhawk chased the asteroid’s rotation, turning
the gully sides to a floor and ceiling. And Al finally began to understand the way centrifugal force worked.
An explosion bloomed out of the cliff-face rear of the ledge, quarter of the way round from Cameron’s position. It came from
a section of rock that was clad in a big mosaic of metal and composite equipment. A broad fountain of brilliant white gas,
moving sluggishly enough to be a liquid, spitting out from a jagged hole at the centre of the machinery. Tiny chunks of solid
matter spun through the plume.
Al took the Havana from his mouth and crossed over to the window, pressing against it for a better look. “Holy shit. Cameron,
what the hell was that? Is the Navy here already?”
“No, Al. There’s been a breach in the rock. I’m monitoring the radio, nobody’s quite sure what happened.”
“Where did it happen?” Al was straining to see if there were any hellhawks or people on the ledge near the plume.
“It’s in an industrial sector, where you were repairing that nutrient fluid refinery.”
Al slammed the palm of his hand into the window. “That
bitch
!” His three small scars were snow-white against a burning cheek. He stared at the plume as it slowly died down, exposing
the crumpled wreckage that was peeling away from the vertical rock. “Okay, a straight fight is what she wants, that what she
gets.”
“Al, I’m picking up a broadband message to the fleet. It’s Kiera.”
One of the small circular ports along the side of the observation deck shimmered over and began showing Kiera’s face. “. .
. after Arnstat there can be no alternative. The Confederation Navy is coming, and with the numbers to defeat us. Unless you
want to be banished back to the beyond, we have to transfer ourselves down to the planet. I have the means to do this, and
the ability to maintain our authority on the surface without relying on the SD platforms and antimatter. Everything you have
now, your status and position, can be continued under my patronage. And this time around you don’t have to risk yourselves
on those dangerous war missions of Capone’s. His day is over. For those of you who choose to have a privileged future, get
in touch with Luigi, he will be joining you in the
Swabia
. If you follow him to low orbit, I will provide the means to establish yourselves on the surface. Anyone who wants to stay
and wait for the Navy, feel free.”
“Damnit.” Al picked up the black telephone. “Cameron, get me Silvano.”
“He’s there, boss.”
“Silvano?” Al yelled. “You hearing Kiera?”
“I hear her, boss,” the lieutenant’s voice crackled.
“Tell Emmet he’s to stop any ship that doesn’t stay where it is any way he God damn can. I’ll talk to the fleet myself later.
And I want that fucking message closed down. Now! Send a bunch of our soldiers to surround her headquarters, don’t let anybody
out. I’m gonna come and deal with her personally. Tonight she starts sleeping with the fish.”
“You got it.”
“I’ll be docking any minute. I want you and some of the guys there to meet me. Loyal ones, Silvano.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
______
Luigi arrived at the base of the docking spindle feeling pretty damn good. The waiting and plotting had been getting to him,
too much like sneaking around in the dark. He was an out-in-the-open kind of guy. Kiera had insisted he keep a low profile:
he was still running round after that nobody Malone down in the gym, shovelling shit for non-possessed. The times when he
got out to meet his old friends flying the Organization warships were few and far between, and at the meetings all he did
was drop a few words of sedition, plant the seeds of doubt.
Every time he’d go back to Kiera and assure her the fleet was losing patience with Capone. Which was so. But he hyped the
figures a little, carving himself a bigger slice.
Now that didn’t matter any more. He’d walked out of Malone’s cruddy basement as soon as Arnstat registered, not even waiting
for Kiera’s call. This was it, their chance. Once he was back out there with the fleet, all those numbers wouldn’t mean shit.
They’d follow him again, he knew it. He’d always been good with his lieutenants, they respected him.
The big transfer chamber at the axial hub was almost deserted when he came out of the tube. He air-swam over to the doors
for the commuter cabs.
A man and a woman glided across to him. It annoyed Luigi, but this wasn’t the place to make a scene. Ten minutes,
ten
, and he’d be back inside a starship again, in command.
“I remember you,” Kingsley Pryor said. “You were one of Capone’s lieutenants.”
“What’s it to you, pal?” Luigi snapped back. He’d never been able to live with the nudges and whispers which followed him
everywhere, like he was some kind of child molester on the run.
“Nothing. Are you going out to a ship?”
“Yeah. That’s right.” Luigi looked away, maybe the dumbass would catch on.
“That’s nice,” said Kingsley. “So are we.”
The doors opened, revealing the commuter cab’s empty interior. Kingsley gestured politely. “Please, you first.”
______
After she showered, Jezzibella marched along the side of the bed, inspecting each of the dresses Libby had laid out. The problem
was, none of them were new. She’d gone through her whole wardrobe since she hooked up with Al.
I need new clothes
. It had never been a problem when she was touring. Clothes were such a minuscule part of the tour budget that the company
never quibbled when she bought a new range on every planet—not that she had to. Each fresh star system was colonized by hot
young designers who’d kill for her to be seen just looking at their labels.
She sighed and reviewed the lineup again. It would have to be the blue and green summer dress with its wide shoulder straps
and micro-skirt. Worn over the girlishly sympathetic persona.
The tiny dermal scales began to contract and expand in response to the sequence she keyed in, performing their minute adjustments
to her baseline facial expression so that she appeared perpetually intrigued and trusting. Skin texture softened to a young,
healthy glow. Twenty-one all over again.
Jezzibella went over to the angled mirrors on the dressing table to check herself over. The eyes weren’t right; they were
too rigid, insufficiently awed and excited by the beautiful mysterious world they explored. A little piece of the tough executive
persona hanging on past its sell-by date. She scowled at the offending patches; the dermal scales were degenerating again.
It was always the areas around the eyes which wore out first. Her supply of replacements was none too high, either. Not even
a planet could make up that shortfall; her stocks had always come straight from Tropicana, the one Adamist world with relaxed
bitek laws.