“I don’t care. Money doesn’t concern me.”
“Okay, I think we’ve reached interface here.” He turned to his colleague and muttered something. The older man gave him a disgruntled look, then shrugged. He walked out of the office, giving the two serjeants a curious glance as he passed.
“Richard Keaton.” The athletic young man leaned over the desk, holding his hand out and smiling broadly. “Call me Dick.”
“I certainly will.” They shook hands.
“Sorry about Matty, there. He’s got enough implants to chop up a squad of marines. But he gets overprotective, and I don’t need him hovering right now. Smart of you to see which of us was which. I don’t think anyone’s ever done that before.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“So what can I do for you, Captain Calvert?”
“I need to find someone.”
Keaton raised a forefinger. “If I could just interrupt. First, there is my fee.”
“I’m not going to quibble. I might even pay a bonus.”
One of the serjeants tapped a foot pointedly on the worn carpet.
“Nice to hear, Captain. Okay then; my fee is one flight off this planet on the Lady Macbeth, just as soon as you leave. Destination: who cares.”
“That’s an . . . unusual fee. Any particular reason?”
“Like I said, Captain, you came to the right place. This might not be the biggest firm in town, but I fish the data streams. There are possessed on Nyvan. They’ve already taken over Jesup, that wasn’t just propaganda by our upstanding government. The electronic warfare barrage in orbit? That was cover to help them get down here. There aren’t too many in Tonala yet—not according to the Special Investigation Bureau, anyway. But they’re spreading through the other countries.”
“So you want to be gone?”
“I sure do. And I figure you won’t be here when they reach Harrisburg, either. Look, I won’t be any trouble on board. Hell, shove me into zero-tau, I don’t mind.”
Joshua didn’t have the time to argue. Besides, taking Keaton with them actually reduced the risk of exposure. A flight off Nyvan wasn’t such a high price. “You bring only what you’ve got with you; I’m not waiting while you go home to pack. We don’t have any slack built into our mission profile.”
“We have a deal, Captain.”
“Very well, welcome aboard, Dick. Now, the person I want is called Dr Alkad Mzu, alias Daphine Kigano. She arrived on the starship Tekas last night with three companions. I don’t know where she is or who she might attempt to contact; however, she will be trying to stay hidden.” He datavised over a visual file. “Find her.”
* * *
Twenty thousand kilometres above Nyvan, the Organization frigate Urschel emerged from its ZTT jump. It was swiftly followed by the Raimo and the Pinzola. They were nowhere near a designated emergence zone, but only the four voidhawks were aware of their arrival. None of Nyvan’s gravitonic-distortion detector satellites were functioning; the waves of electronic warfare assaults had crashed them beyond repair.
After five minutes assessing the local situation, their fusion drives came on, pushing them towards a low-orbit injection point. Once they were on their way, Oscar Kearn, the small flotilla’s commander, concentrated on the eternal, beseeching voices crying into his head.
Where is Mzu? he asked them.
The possessed among the crew, including Cherri Barnes, joined his silky cajoling, adding to the tricksy promises he made. Theirs was a multiple chant which hummed through the beyond, a harmonic passed between every desperate soul. It agitated them, its very existence a taunt; plots and scheming were an exquisitely tortuous reminder of what lay on the other side of their dreadful continuum, what they could partake of once again if they just helped.
Where is Mzu?
What is she doing?
Who is with her?
There are bodies waiting for worthy hosts. Millions of bodies, out here among the light and air and experience, held ready for Capone’s friends. One could be yours. If—
Where is Mzu? Exactly?
Ah.
When they reached a five hundred kilometre orbit, each of the frigates dispatched a spaceplane. The three black delta-shapes sliced down through Nyvan’s atmosphere, their tapering noses lining up on Tonala, hidden behind the planet’s curvature seven thousand kilometres ahead.
Oscar Kearn ordered the frigates to manoeuvre again, and they began to raise their orbit.
* * *
“This really doesn’t look good,” Sarha said. “The sensors are showing three of them. I don’t think their transponders are responding to the station.”
“You don’t think?” Beaulieu queried.
“Who knows? Those bloody SD platforms are still at it. I doubt we could pick up an em pulse through all this jamming.”
“What are their drive exhausts like?” Liol asked.
Sarha ignored the datavised displays inside her skull long enough to fire a disgusted glance at him. The three of them were alone on Lady Mac’s bridge. All the remaining serjeants were down in B capsule, guarding the airlock tube. “What?” There were times when he was a little bit too much like Joshua, that is: quite infuriating.
“If there are possessed on board, they’ll be affecting the ship’s systems,” Liol recited. “Their drives will fluctuate. The recordings from Lalonde taught us that. Remember?”
Sarha didn’t trust herself to answer directly. Yes he was like Joshua, gallingly right the whole time. “I’m not sure our discrimination programs will be much use at this distance. I can’t get a radar lock to determine their velocity.”
“Want me to try?”
“No thank you.”
“When Josh said don’t give me access to the flight computer, I don’t think he meant I wasn’t supposed to help you survive an assault by the possessed,” Liol said peevishly.
“You will be able to ask him directly soon,” Beaulieu said. “We should be over Ashly’s horizon in another ninety seconds.”
“Those ships are definitely heading for a rendezvous with the Spirit of Freedom,” Sarha said. “The optical image is good enough for a rough vector analysis.”
“I’d like to point out that the three highly similar ships which appeared at the Dorados before we left were all from New California,” Liol said.
“I am aware of that,” Sarha snarled back.
“Jolly good. I’d hate to be possessed by anyone I didn’t know.”
“What are the voidhawks doing?” Beaulieu asked.
“I don’t know. They’re on the other side of the planet.” Sarha was uncomfortably aware of the perspiration permeating her shipsuit. She datavised the conditioning grille above her for some cool, dry air—cooler, dryer air. And to think, I’d always been slightly envious about Joshua having command of a starship. “I’m disengaging the airlock,” she told the other two. “Station staff might try to come on board once they realize those starships are heading here.” It was a logical action. And actually doing something made her feel a whole lot better.
“I’ve got the spaceplane beacon,” Beaulieu announced.
“You’re still intact, then?” Ashly datavised.
“Yeah, still here,” Sarha replied gamely. “What’s your situation?”
“Stable. Nothing much is moving at the spaceport. The four Edenist flyers arrived half an hour ago. They’re parked about two hundred metres away from me right now. I tried datavising them, but they’re not answering. A whole group of people set off into town as soon as they landed. There were cars here waiting for them.”
The flight computer signalled that Joshua was coming on line. “Any signs of possession on the planet yet?” he asked.
“I’d have to say yes, Captain,” Beaulieu told him. “The national nets are suffering considerable degrees of dropout. But there’s no real pattern to it. Several countries don’t have a single glitch.”
“They will,” Joshua datavised.
“Joshua, t
hree Adamist starships appeared an hour ago,” Sarha datavised. “We believe they sent some spaceplanes or flyers down to the planet; they were in the right orbit for it. Liol thinks they’re the same Organization ships that were at the Dorados.”
“Oh, well, if the starflight expert says so . . .”
“Josh, those frigates are heading for this station,” Liol datavised.
“Oh, Jesus. Okay, get clear of the station. And, Sarha, try to get a positive ident.”
“Will do. How are things your end?”
“Promising, I think. Expect us . . . today, what . . . outcome.”
“I’m losing the link,” Beaulieu warned. “Heavy interference, and it’s focused directly at us.”
“Josh, let me have access authority for the flight computer. Sarha and Beaulieu are being overloaded up here, for Christ’s sake. I can help.”
“. . . think . . . mummy’s boy . . . on my ship . . . fucking . . . because I’ll . . . first . . . trust . . .”
“Lost them,” Beaulieu said.
“The frigates have started jamming us directly,” Sarha said. “They know we’re here.”
“They’re softening up the station for an assault,” Liol said. “Give me the access codes, I can fly Lady Mac away.”
“No, you heard Joshua.”
“He said he trusted me.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Look, you two have to operate the on-board systems, monitor the electronic warfare battle, and now you’ve got to watch the frigates as well. If we launch now they might think we’re going to defend the station. Can you fly Lady Mac and fight at the same time as everything else?”
“Beaulieu?” Sarha asked.
“Not my decision, but he does have a point. We need to leave, now.”
“Sarha, Josh is all emotionally tangled up when it comes to me. Fair enough, I didn’t handle him well. But you can’t endanger his life and ours on a single bad decision made from ignorance. I’ll do my best here. Trust me. Please.”
“All right! Damn it. But fusion drive authority only. You’re not jumping us anywhere.”
“Fine.” And the dream finally happened, just as he’d always known it would. Lady Mac’s flight computer opened to him, and all the systems were on-line, filling his mind with glorious wing-sweeps of colour. They fitted just perfectly.
He designated the procedure menus he needed, bringing the thrusters and drive tubes up to active flight status. Beaulieu and Sarha were working smoothly together, activating the remaining on board systems. Umbilicals retracted from the fuselage, and the cradle started to elevate them out of the shallow docking bay. The viewfield which the flight computer was datavising at him expanded as more of Lady Mac’s sensor clusters lifted above the rim. Three bright, expanding stars were ringed in antagonistic red as they crept up over the curvature of the brilliant blue horizon.
Liol fired the verniers to take them off the cradle, not caring if the other two could see the stupid smile on his face. For a moment, all the envy and bitterness returned, the irrational pique he’d felt when he first learned that Joshua existed, a usurper brother who was captaining the ship which was rightfully his. This was the rush that belonged to him. The power to traverse the galaxy.
One day, he and Joshua were going to have to settle this.
But not today. Today was when he proved himself to his brother and the crew. Today was when he started living the life he knew belonged to him.
When they were a hundred metres above the docking bay, Liol fired the secondary drive, selecting a third of a gee acceleration. Lady Mac immediately veered off the vector he’d plotted. He pumped a fast correction order into the flight computer, deflecting the exhaust angle. Overcompensating. “Wowshit!” The acceleration couch webbing gripped him tighter.
“The spaceplane hangar is empty,” Sarha said witheringly. “That means our mass distribution is off centre. Perhaps you’d care to bring the level seven balance calibration programs on-line?”
“Sorry.” He searched desperately around the flight control menus and found the right program. Lady Mac juddered back onto her original vector.
“Joshua is going to throw me out of the airlock,” Sarha decided.
* * *
It had taken some time for Lodi to get used to having Omain sitting in the hotel suite with him. A possessed for Mary’s sake! But Omain turned out to be quiet and polite (a little sad, to be honest), keeping out of the way. Lodi slowly managed to relax, though this must surely be the strangest episode in his life. Nothing was ever going to out-weird this.
At first he had jumped every time Omain even spoke. Now, he was relatively cool about the whole scene. His processor blocks were spread out over one of the tables, enabling him to cast trawl programs into the net streams, fishing out relevant information. It was what he did best, so Voi had left him to it while she, Mzu, and Eriba went to the Opia company. His main concern at the moment was monitoring the civil situation now the government had closed the borders. Voi wanted to make sure they would be allowed to get back into orbit. So far, it looked as if they could. There had even been one piece of good luck, the first since they arrived at Nyvan. A starship called Lady Macbeth had docked at the Spirit of Freedom, and it was exactly the type of ship Mzu wanted.
“They are asking for her,” Omain said.
“Huh?” Lodi cancelled the datavised displays, blinking away the afterimage the graphics left in his mind.
“Capone’s people are in orbit,” Omain said. “They know Mzu is here. They are asking for her.”
“You mean you can tell what’s going on in orbit? Mary! I can’t, not with all the interference from the SD platforms.”
“Not tell, exactly. This is whispered gossip, distorted by the many souls it has passed through. I have only the vaguest notion of the facts.”
Lodi was fascinated. Once he began talking, Omain knew some seriously interesting facts. He’d lived on Garissa, and was quite willing to share his impressions. (Lodi had never summoned the courage to ask Mzu what their old world was like.) From Omain’s melancholic descriptions it sounded like a good place to live. The Garissans, Lodi was sure, had lost more than their world by the sound of it; their whole culture was different now, too tight-arsed and Western-ethnic orientated.
One of the processor blocks datavised a warning into Lodi’s neural nanonics. “Oh, bollocks!”
“What is it?”
They had to speak in raised voices, almost shouting at each other. Omain was sitting in the corner of the living room furthest from Lodi, it was the only way the blocks would remain functional.
“Someone has accessed the hotel’s central processor. They’ve loaded a search program for the three of us, and it’s got a visual reference for Mzu, too.”
“It cannot be the possessed, surely?” Omain said. “Neural nanonics don’t function for us.”
“Might be the Organization ships. No. They’d never be able to access Tonala’s net from orbit, not with the platforms still going at it. Hang on, I’ll see what I can find out.” He felt almost happy as he started retrieving tracker programs from the memory fleks he’d brought. The net dons in this city probably had ten times the experience he’d got from snooping around Ayacucho’s communications circuits, but his programs were still able to flash back through the junctions, tracing the origin of the searchers.
The answer sprang into his mind just as the hotel’s central processor crashed. “Wow, that was some guardian program. But I got them. You know anything about a local firm called Kilmartin and Elgant?”
“No. But I haven’t been here long, not in this incarnation.”
“Right.” Lodi twitched a smile. “I’ll see what . . . that’s odd.”
Omain had risen from his chair. He was frowning at the suite’s double door. “What is?”
“The suite’s net processor is down.”
The door chimed.
“Did you . . .” Lodi began.
Something very heavy smashed
into the door. Its panels bulged inwards. Splintering sounds were spitting out of the frame.
“Run!” Omain shouted. He stood before the door, both arms held towards it, palms outwards. His face was clenched with effort. The air twisted frantically in front of him, whipping up a small gale.
Another blow hammered the door, and Omain was sent staggering backwards. Lodi turned to run for the bedroom. He was just in time to see a fat three-metre-long serpent slither vertically up the outside of the window. Its huge head reared back, levelling out to stare straight at him. The jaws parted to display fangs as big as fingers. Then it lunged forwards, shattering the glass.
* * *
From his elevated position in the command post, Shemilt studied the ops table below him. One of the girls leaned over and pushed a red-flagged marker closer to the deserted asteroid.
“In range, sir,” she reported.
Shemilt nodded, trying not to show too much dismay. All three of the inter-orbit ships were in range of New Georgia’s SD network now. And Quinn had not returned to change his orders. His very specific orders.
If only we weren’t so bloody terrified of him, Shemilt thought. He still felt sick every time he remembered the zero-tau pod containing Captain Gurtan Mauer. Quinn had opened it up during two of the black mass ceremonies.
If we all grouped together—But of course, death was no longer the end. Throwing the dark messiah into the beyond would solve nothing.
There was a single red telephone in his command post. He picked up the handset. “Fire,” he ordered.
* * *
Two of the three inter-orbit ships on their way to find out what the teams from Jesup were doing in the deserted asteroids were struck by X-ray lasers. The beams shone clean through the life support capsules and the fusion drive casings. Both crews died instantly. Electronics flash evaporated. Drive systems ruptured. Two wrecks tumbled through space, their hulls glowing a dull orange, vapour squirting from split tanks.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 220
