Patricia stepped forward from the rank of badly alarmed gangsters. “Al. Al, that’s enough.”
The bat was brought up, ready to fly at her head. Al met her level gaze, stood for a moment with the bat poised. A long breath
shuddered out of him. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go find Kiera.”
______
The floor under Emmet was melting, transmuting into a puddle of cold liquid rock. It would soon be deep enough to swallow
him whole. Somebody was becoming very anxious to turn him into a fossil. He strove hard to turn the rock solid again as the
air above him raged with white fire and profanities. The two factions were evenly matched, and both of them kept shouting
at him to throw his strength in on their side.
He wanted to help Al’s guys. His own side. Really wanted to. Except the idea of going with New California into a place of
safety was hugely appealing. No more of this shit, for a start.
A voracious spout of white fire hit the console he was crouched behind, and started chewing its way through the composite
casing and tightly packed circuitry cubes inside. Kiera’s people obviously had decided he wasn’t joining them.
Retardant foam gushed downwards, only to be catalysed into boiling green treacle by the unnatural blaze. It poured off the
top of the console and splattered over Emmet, stinging his exposed skin. He drew a deep breath, praying his bladder would
hold out, and conjured up a spear of white fire. It flashed across the chamber towards Jull von Holger and his cohorts. The
immediate result wasn’t quite what he expected.
A thunderous roar swamped the control centre. A possessed body ignited, forcing Emmet to clamp his hand over his eyes. The
mental and vocal shriek of the vanquished soul grated down his skin like needles of ice. A second body erupted, then another.
The air was clogged with stifling heat and a vomitous stench of incinerated meat as they belched out thick fumes.
After a long time the bodies burnt out, returning the light level to normal. The awful fetor remained. The roaring had stopped.
A loud metallic
snik
sounded across the chamber. To Emmet’s ears it sounded mechanical, and very weapons orientated. Footsteps squelched through
the foam.
“You’ve pissed yourself,” a voice told him.
Emmet twisted his head out of the foetal position. A gaunt man in a grubby one-piece suit was looking down at him, holding
a peculiar machine gun, its warm barrel pointing directly at Emmet’s forehead. A canvas satchel was slung over his shoulder,
packed full of magazines.
“I was scared,” Emmet said. “I’m not part of the Organization’s muscle.”
The man’s features vanished for a second, replaced by a woman’s. If anything, her expression was even more forbidding. Emmet
could sense the energistic power circulating through the body. It rivalled Al’s strength.
Survivors from the Organization faction were peering nervously over the top of their trashed consoles.
“Who are you?” Emmet stammered.
“We are the Skibbows.”
“Uh, right. Are you on Kiera’s side?”
“No. But we’d really like to know where she is.” The machine gun’s safety catch was released. “Now, please.”
______
Mickey Pileggi had learned the hard way not to try and storm Kiera and her goons. Three of his soldiers had wound up burning
like miniature suns when they all charged into the Nixon suite. Mickey had entertained visions of lavish praise and unlimited
privileges heaped upon him by Al for rescuing Jezzibella from Kiera’s hands. That dream had quickly turned into a crock of
shit. The guns she was armed with had caused havoc amongst the gangsters. Those screams would echo through the air around
Mickey for eternity.
He’d ordered them to fall back to the hallway outside, taking up shielded positions in the twin stairwells and disabling the
elevators with strategic blasts of white fire. They were at the bottom of the tower. She wasn’t going anywhere. Now he just
had to explain to Al how he’d fouled up.
Another spray of static bullets hammered out from the splintered doors of the Nixon suite. All the gangsters ducked, thickening
the local air.
“We should seal this floor off,” one of them said. “Blow the windows out and see how she likes eating vacuum.”
“Great idea,” Mickey grumbled. “Are you gonna tell Al we did to Jezzibella what they did to Brown-nose Bernhard?”
“Guess not.”
“Okay. Now come on, guys. Let’s concentrate on making those doors evaporate. Keep them occupied defending themselves while
our reinforcements arrive.”
“If any do.”
Mickey shot the man a furious glare. “Nobody’s deserting Al, not after what he’s done for us.”
“For you.”
Mickey didn’t see who said that, but let the sharp anger show amid his thoughts as a warning. He focused on the door, and
punched it with the force of his mind. Bullets pulverised a line in the marble wall above his head. Tiny tendrils of electricity
scrabbled across the surface. Everyone flinched down fast.
His processor block bleeped. He dusted hot marble chips from his hair and pulled it out of his pocket, amazed the thing was
working with so much machismo energistic power buzzing about.
“Mickey?” Emmet implored. “Mickey, you got any idea where Kiera is?”
“Pretty sure, yeah. She’s like ten yards away from me.” Mickey gave the block an infuriated look as Emmet abruptly cut the
call. “Okay guys, let’s hit the doors together this time. On three. One. Two—”
______
The office door shut behind Skibbow, and Emmet let out a
huge
gasp of relief. There was a real monster of a problem torturing that wacko possessed, and Emmet was enormously glad he didn’t
share any part of it. He let his body calm for a few precious moments more, then called Al.
“Whatcha got for me, Emmet?”
“We had a problem in the SD control centre, Al. Kiera’s people tried to knock out the orbital platforms.”
“And?”
“They’re sleeping with the fish.” He held his breath, worried Al could sense half-truths along the communication circuit.
“I owe you one, Emmet. I won’t forget what you did.”
Emmet’s fingers were skidding fast over his desktop keyboard, re-routing the SD network’s main command channels. Symbols blinked
up on the tactical display, showing him what he was in charge of. He smiled uneasily at the power he’d assumed. Lord of the
sky, admiral of the fleet, enforcer of order across a whole planet. “The place is pretty much a bombsite, Al, but I’ve still
got control of the major hardware.”
“What’s the fleet doing, Emmet? Are the guys staying put?”
“Pretty much. Eight frigates are heading down to low orbit, I guess the rest are waiting to hear what you’ve got to say. But
Al, I count seventeen hellhawks missing.”
“Je-zus, Emmet, first chunk of good news I’ve had today. You keep watching everybody, make sure they don’t move. I got some
business to clear up, then I’ll be right back with you.”
“Sure thing, Al.” He blinked, and squinted at the tactical display. It wasn’t supposed to be shown on such a small scale;
this was a format designed to showcase across a hundred metre screen in front of admirals and defence chiefs. From what he
could make out, two miniaturised symbols were moving very close to Monterey itself.
______
The
Varrad
skimmed above the wrinkled rock, keeping a constant fifty-metre separation from the pumice-like terrain, lifting and sinking
in perfect curving parallels with the craters and ridges beneath its metallic lower hull. Pran Soo was pursuing the Hilton
tower as it slid across the stars, closing on it like an atmospheric fighter on a low-visibility strike run. Along with all
the other hellhawks, she’d been monitoring what communications she could access since Kiera’s revolt had started. And Mickey
Pileggi had spent fifteen minutes yelling across the net at his fellow Organization lieutenants for help to deal with Kiera
and her dangerous weapons.
Are you sure about this?
Rocio asked.
Absolutely. We know a possessed body is incapable of defending itself against a starship weapon. The power level is simply
too great, even if they know they’re being targeted. I can eliminate Kiera with one shot, and this time there will be no comeback
from the Organization. We will truly be free.
Capone’s girlfriend is in that hotel suite.
He will find another. We will never have an opportunity like this again.
Very well, but try to keep the destruction to a minimum. We may yet have to cut a deal with the Organization.
Not if the Confederation Navy gets here first.
Let me see what’s happening. The rock is blocking my distortion field.
Pran Soo opened her affinity, allowing him to borrow the sights revealed to her bitek sensor blisters, showing him the rock
rushing past her hull. Her other principal sense, the
Varrad
’s distortion field, was reduced to a hemispherical shape, its usual bloated coverage curtailed by the giant asteroid.
The Monterey Hilton swung towards her, sticking out proud from the rock. Visually, a pillar of tough carbon-reinforced titanium
riddled with thick, multi-layered windows. Inside the distortion field it emerged as a coagulation of thin sheets of matter,
threaded with a filigree of minute power cables whose electrons were imbued with a delicate spectral sheen.
She matched her vector with the asteroid’s rotation. Electronic pods on her hull flowered, thrusting out sensors. They swept
across the lower floors of the tower.
I can’t distinguish individual people,
she told Rocio.
The window’s radiation shielding is an effective block against precision scanning. I am aware of their emotions, but from
this distance they’ve blurred together. All I know is, several people are definitely in there.
And Mickey Pileggi is still calling for assistance. Kiera must be one of those you sense.
Pran Soo activated a microwave laser, and aligned it on the base of the Hilton. The beam would slice along the side of the
tower, filleting the structural girders so the entire bottom floor would tumble away into interplanetary space. Targeting
systems designated the requisite cutting pattern.
A hellhawk rose above the asteroid’s flat horizon behind
Pran Soo, its hull crawling with vivid lines of electrical energy feeding a comprehensive armament of beam weapons.
Etchells,
Pran Soo exclaimed in surprise.
Two masers punctured her thick polyp hull, penetrating right into the central core of organs.
______
Emmet finally managed to shift the tactical display’s magnification, enhancing the zone around Monterey itself. He was just
in time to watch one of the symbols drift away from the Hilton tower. The other symbol moved in closer to the hotel. Its data
tag identifying it as the
Stryla
, which he knew was possessed by Etchells. But he didn’t have a clue whose side it was on, even if the hellhawks were taking
sides.
He activated the close-range defence systems and ordered them to target the hellhawk. The only option, given SD’s hellhawk
liaison guy was now a mound of ash in the ruined control centre. Etchells was an unknown factor, capable of killing possessed
humans. And Al was heading down into the Hilton.
Stryla
’s symbol sprouted a small batch of alphanumerics, telling Emmet it was datavising directly to the asteroid’s SD command.
He hunted round his program menus, desperately trying to route the message through to his office.
“Disengage your targeting lock,” Etchells said.
“No way,” Emmet told him. “I want you a thousand kilometres away from this asteroid; you have thirty seconds to begin accelerating
or I’ll fire.”
“Listen, bollockbrain. I have fifty combat wasps in my launch cradles, all with innumerable submunitions, all fitted with
fusion warheads. Right now, they are all armed, and activated by a deadman code. You cannot train enough beam weapons on me
to vaporise me and the missiles instantaneously. If you fire, they will detonate. I’m not sure if that much megatonnage will
crack Monterey open or not. Would you like to find out?”
Emmet’s hands clamped round his head in an agony of frustration. I am not cut out for any of this shit. I want to go home.
What would Al do? It wasn’t such a good question. He had the horrible feeling that if you put Al in a Mexican stand-off he
would shoot.
“You know, I might just,” he said stubbornly. “I’ve had a real shitty time today, and the Confederation Navy is on the way
to make it worse.”
“I know the feeling,” Etchells said. “But I’m really not a threat to you.”
“Then what the hell are you doing there?”
“I have to ask someone a question. Once I’ve done that, I’ll leave. Give me five minutes, then you can start acting tough
again. Deal?”
______
The expensive designer gloss had departed from the lounge in the Nixon suite. Mickey’s ill-judged attempt to beachhead the
place had resulted in streamers of white fire slashing round in chaotic violence, and Kiera’s counter-attack had only made
it worse. The lights were out, a tangle of broken pipes and cables hung down out of the ceiling, the furniture had burned
enthusiastically and was now reduced to smoking embers. Torrents of energistic power poured upon the doors by both sides had
turned them and the surrounding walls into a fantastic tract of heterogeneous crystal; long encrustations of quartz sprouted
in jumbled antagonism, each branch fighting its neighbour like a forest of avaricious jewels. They writhed fluidly each time
another burst of power doused them, growing slightly longer and more entwined.
Kiera worried that the continual assaults on the door were a diversion. She had two of her goons patrolling the other rooms,
searching for the Organization gangsters grouping together on the other side of the suite’s walls and especially the ceiling.
So far they hadn’t tried to break through, but it would be only a matter of time. Nobody was stupid enough to keep on trying
the same route in when they were so thoroughly blocked. There was also the ammunition question. She was going to run out eventually.