11

For some reason, the tangled strands of black mist which filled this dark continuum would always slide apart to allow Valisk through. Not one wisp had ever touched the polyp. The habitat personality still hadn’t managed to determine the nature of movement outside its shell. Without valid reference points, there was no way of knowing if it was sailing along on some unknowable voyage, or the veils of darkness were simply gusting past. The identity, structure, and quantum signature of their new continuum remained a complete mystery. They didn’t even know if the ebony nebula was made from matter. All they did know for certain was that a hard vacuum lay outside the shell.

Rubra’s uncorked brigade of descendants had devoted considerable effort into modifying spaceport MSVs into automated sensor platforms. Five of the vehicles had already been launched, their chemical rockets burning steadily as they raced off into the void. Combustion, at least, remained an inter-universal constant. The same could not be said for their electronic components. Only the most basic of systems would function outside the protection of the shell, and even those decayed in proportion to the distance travelled. The power circuits themselves failed at about a hundred kilometres, by which time the amount of information transmitted had fallen to near zero. Which was information in itself. The continuum had an intrinsic damping effect on electromagnetic radiation; presumably accounting for the funereal nature of the nebula. Physicists and the personality speculated that such an effect might be influencing electron orbits, which in turn would explain some of the electrical and biochemical problems they were encountering.

The gigantic web of ebony vapour wouldn’t touch the probes, either, denying them a sample/return mission. Radar was utterly useless. Even laser radar could only just track the modified MSVs. Ten days after the axial light tube was powered up, they were floundering badly. No experiment or observation they’d run had resulted in the acquisition of hard data. Without that, they couldn’t even start to theorize how to get back.

By contrast, life inside the habitat was becoming more ordered, though not necessarily pleasant. Everybody who’d been possessed required medical treatment of some kind. Worst hit were the elderly, whose possessors had quite relentlessly twisted and moulded their flesh into the more vigorous contours sported by youthful bodies. Anyone who’d been overweight was also suffering. As were the thin, the short; anyone with different skin colour to their possessor, different hair. And without exception, everyone’s features had been morphed—that came as naturally as breathing to the possessed.

Valisk didn’t have anything like the number of medical nanonic packages required to treat the population. Those packages that were available operated at a very low efficiency level. Medical staff who could program them correctly shared the same psychologically fragile demeanour as all the recently de-possessed. And Rubra’s descendants were tremendously busy just trying to keep the habitat supplied with power to give much assistance to the sick. Besides, the numbers were stacked hard and high against them.

After the initial burst of optimism at the return of light, a grim resignation settled among the refugees as more and more of their circumstances were revealed to them. An exodus began. They started walking towards the caverns of the northern endcap. Long caravans of people wound their way out from the starscraper lobby parks, trampling down the dainty parkland paths as they set off down the interior. In many cases, it took several days to walk the twenty kilometre length across the scrub desert. They were searching for a haven where the medical packages would work properly, where there was some kind of organized authority, a decent meal, a place where the ghosts didn’t lurk around the boundaries. That grail wasn’t to be found amid the decrepit slums encircling the starscraper lobbies.

I don’t know what the hell they expect me to do for them, the habitat personality complained to Dariat (among others) as the first groups set out. There’s not enough food in the caverns, for a start.

Then you’d better work out how to get hold of some, Dariat replied. Because they’ve got the right idea. The starscrapers can’t support them any more.

Power within the towers was as erratic as it had been ever since they arrived in the dark continuum. The lifts didn’t work. Food secretion organs extruded inedible sludge. Digestion organs were unable to process and flush the waste. Air circulation tubules spluttered and wheezed.

If the starscrapers can’t sustain them, then the caverns certainly won’t be able to, the personality replied.

Nonsense. Half the trees in your interior are fruiting varieties.

Barely a quarter. In any case, all the orchards are down at the southern end.

Then get teams organized to pick the fruit, and strip the remaining supplies from the starscrapers. You’d have to do this, anyway. You are the government here, remember. They’ll do as you tell them; they always have. It’ll be a comfort having the old authority figure take charge again.

All right, all right. I don’t need the psychology lectures.

Order, of a kind, was established. The caverns came to resemble a blend of nomad camps and field hospital triage wards. People slumped where they found a spare patch of ground, waiting to be told what to do next. The personality resumed its accustomed role, and started issuing orders. Cancers and aggravated anorexias were assessed and prioritized, the medical packages distributed accordingly. Like the fusion generators and physics lab equipment, they worked best in the deeper caverns. Teams were formed from the healthiest, and assigned to food procurement duties. There were also teams to strip the starscrapers of equipment, clothes, blankets—a broad range of essentials. Transport had to be organized.

The ghosts followed faithfully after their old hosts, of course, flittering across the desert during the twilight hours to skulk about in the hollows and crevices decorating the base of the northern endcap during the day. Naked hostility continued to act as an intangible buffer, preventing them from entering any of the subterranean passages.

It also expelled Dariat. The refugees didn’t distinguish between ghosts. In any case, had they discovered he was the architect of their current status, their antipathy would probably have wiped him out altogether. His one consolation was that the personality was now part self. It wouldn’t disregard him and his needs as an annoying irritation.

In part he was right, though the assumption of privilege was an arrogant one—the pure Dariat of old. However, in these strange, dire times, there were even useful jobs to be had for cooperative ghosts. The personality gave him Tolton as a partner, and detailed the pair of them to take an inventory of the starscrapers.

“Him!” Tolton had exclaimed in dismay when Erentz explained his new duties.

She looked from the shocked and indignant street poet to the fat ghost with his mocking smile. “You worked well together before,” she ventured. “I’m proof of that.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Okay. Most of that row need seeing to.” She gestured at the long line of beds along the polyp wall. It was one of eight similar rows in the vaulting cavern; made up from mattresses or clustered pillows hurriedly shoved into a loose kind of order. The ailing occupants were wrapped in dirty blankets like big shivering pupas. They moaned and drooled and soiled themselves as the nanonic packages sluggishly repaired their damaged cells. Their helpless state meant they needed constant nursing. And there were few enough people left over from the teams prospecting the habitat able to do that.

“Which starscraper do we start with?” Tolton asked.

Each starscraper took at least three days to inventory properly. They’d adopted a comfortable routine by the time they started on their third, the Djerba. The tower had survived Valisk’s recent calamities with minimal damage. Kiera’s wrecking teams hadn’t got round to “reclaiming” it from Rubra’s control. There had been few clashes between possessed and servitors inside before it was abandoned. That meant it should contain plenty of useful items. They just needed cataloguing.

To send the work teams down on a see/grab brief was inefficient, especially as there were so few of them. And the personality’s thought routines had almost been banished from the habitat’s extremities; its memories of room contents were unreliable at best.

“Mostly offices,” Tolton decided as he waved a lightstick around. He was holding one in his hand, with another two slung across his chest on improvised straps. Together, the three units provided almost as much illumination as one working at full efficiency.

“Looks like it,” Dariat said. They were on the twenty-third floor vestibule, where the walls were broken by anonymously identical doors. Tall potted plants in big troughs were wilting, deprived of light their leaves were turning yellow-brown and falling onto the blue and white carpet.

They moved down the vestibule, reading names on the doors. So far offices had resulted in very few worthwhile finds; they’d learned that unless the company was a hardware or medical supplier there was little point in going in and searching. Occasionally the personality’s localized memory would recall a useful item, but the neural strata was becoming more incapable with each floor they descended.

“Thirty years,” Tolton mused. “That’s a long time to hate.” There hadn’t been much else to do except swap life stories.

Dariat smiled in recollection. “You’d understand if you’d ever seen Anastasia. She was the most perfect girl ever to be born.”

“Sounds like I’ll have to write about her some time. But I think your story is more interesting. Man, there’s a lot of suffering in you. You died for her, you actually did it. Actually went and killed yourself. I thought that kind of thing really did only happen in poems and Russian novels.”

“Don’t be too impressed. I only did it after I knew for sure souls existed. Besides—” He gestured down at his huge frame and grubby toga. “I wasn’t losing a lot.”

“Yeah? Well I’m no sensevise star, but I’m hanging on to what I’ve got for as long as I can. Especially now I know there are souls.”

“Don’t worry about the beyond. You can leave it behind if you really want to.”

“Tell that to the ghosts upstairs. In fact, I’m even keener to hang on to my body while we’re in this continuum.”

Tolton stopped outside a sensevise recording studio, and gave Dariat a shrewd look. “You’re in touch with the personality, is there any chance of us getting out of here?”

“Too early to say. We really don’t know very much about the dark continuum yet.”

“Hey, this is me you’re talking to. I survived the whole occupation, you know. Quit with the company line and level with me.”

“I wasn’t going to hold anything back. The one conjecture all my illustrious relatives are worried about is the lobster pot.”

“Lobster pot?”

“Once you get in, you can’t get out. It’s the energy levels, you see. Judging by the way our energy is being absorbed by this continuum’s fabric it doesn’t have the same active energy state. We’re louder and stronger than normal conditions here. And that strength is slowly being drained away, just by being here. It’s an entropy equilibrium effect. Everything levels out in the end. So if we take height as a metaphor, we’re at the bottom of a very deep hole with our universe at the top; which means it’s going to take a hell of an effort to lift ourselves out again. Logically, we need to escape through some kind of wormhole. But even if we knew how to align its terminus coordinates so that it opens inside our own universe, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to generate one. Back in our universe, they took a lot of very precisely focused energy to open, and the nature of this continuum works against that. With this constant debilitation effect, it may not be possible to concentrate enough energy, it’ll dissipate before it reaches critical distortion point.”

“Shit. There’s got to be something we can do.”

“If those rules do apply, our best bet is to try and send a message out. That’s what the personality and my relatives are working towards. If they know where we are, the Confederation might be able to open a wormhole to us from their side.”

“Might be able?”

“All new suggestions welcome. But as it stands, getting them to lower us a rope is the best we can come up with.”

“Some rescue plan. The Confederation has its own problems right now.”

“If they can learn how to grab us back, they’ll be half way to solving them.”

“Sure.”

They reached the end of the vestibule and automatically turned round.

Nothing here, Dariat reported. We’re moving down to the twenty-fourth floor.

All right, the personality replied. There’s a hotel, the Bringnal, a couple of floors down from where you are now. Check its main linen store, we need more blankets.

You’re going to ask one of the teams to lug blankets up twenty-five floors?

All the large hoards above that level have been used. And right now it’s easier to find new ones than wash the old; nobody’s got enough energy for that.

All right. Dariat faced Tolton, taking care to exaggerate his speech. “They want us to find blankets.”

“Sounds like a real priority job we got ourselves here.” Tolton slithered through a partly open muscle membrane and into the stairwell. The quivering lips didn’t bother him nearly so much now.

Dariat followed him, taking care to use the gap. He could slip through solid surfaces, he’d found, if he really wanted to. It was like sinking through ice.

One of the random power surges flowered around them. Electrophorescent cells shone brightly again, illuminating the stairs in stark blue-tinged light. A jet of foggy air streamed out of a tubule vent, sounding like a sorrowful sigh. A thin film of grey water was slicking every surface. Tolton could see the breath in front of his face. He gripped the handrail tighter, fearful of slipping.

“We’re not going to be able to salvage stuff from the starscrapers for much longer,” Tolton said, wiping his hand against his leather jacket. “They’re getting worse.”

“You should see what kind of state the ducts and tubules are in.”

The street poet grunted in resentment. He was actually eating a lot better than most of the population. Inventory duties had a great many perks. The private apartments with their small stocks of quality food and fashionable clothes were his to pick over as he wished. The salvage teams were only interested in the larger stores that were in restaurants and bars. And now the endless succession of lightless floors no longer bothered him, he was glad to be away from the caverns with all their suffering—and smell.

Dariat.

The startled tone made him halt. What?

There’s something outside.

Affinity made him aware of the consternation spreading through his relatives, most of whom were in the counter-rotating spaceport and the caverns.

Show me.

One of the slow flares of red and blue phosphorescence was shimmering through the ebony nebula, sixty kilometres away from the southern endcap. As it dwindled, several more began to bloom in the distance, sending pastel waves of light washing across the gigantic habitat’s shell. The personality didn’t believe the sudden increase in frequency was a coincidence. It was busy concentrating on collecting the images from its external sensitive cells. Once again, Dariat was uncomfortably aware of the effort expended in what should be a simple observation routine.

A speck of hoary-grey flitted among the strands of blackness, snapping in and out of view. Following the smooth curving motions put Dariat in mind of a skier, the thing’s course was very much like a slalom run. Every turn brought it closer to Valisk.

The nebula doesn’t get out of its way, the personality remarked. It’s dodging the braids.

That implies a controlling intelligence, or at least animal-level instinct.

Absolutely.

The initial consternation of Rubra’s descendants had given way to a slick buzz of activity. Those out in the spaceport were activating systems, aligning them on the visitor. An MSV was powered up, ready for an inspection/interception flight.

An MSV can’t match that kind of manoeuvrability, Dariat said. The visitor performed a fast looping spiral around a grainy black curlicue, shooting off in a new direction parallel to Valisk’s shell, fifteen kilometres distant. Visual resolution was improving. The visitor was about a hundred metres across, appearing like a disk of ragged petals. Even a voidhawk would have trouble making rendezvous.

The visitor darted behind another frayed column of blackness. When it re-emerged it was soaring almost at right angles to its original course. Its petals were bending and flexing.

They look like sails to me, Dariat said.

Or wings. Although I don’t understand what it could be pushing against.

If this continuum has such a low energy state, how come it can move so fast?

Beats me.

Several spaceport dishes started tracking the visitor. They began transmitting the standard CAB xenoc interface communication protocol on a multi-spectrum sweep. Dariat allowed his affinity bond to decline to a background whisper. “Come on,” he told a frowning Tolton. “We’ve got to find a window.”

The visitor didn’t respond to the interface protocol. Nor did it show any awareness of the radar pulses fired at it. That was perhaps understandable, given that they produced no return signal. The only noticeable change as it spun and danced ever-closer was the way shadows congealed around it. Visually it actually appeared to grow smaller, as though it were flying away from the habitat.

That’s like the optical distortion effect which the possessed use to protect themselves with, Dariat said. He and Tolton had found a snug bar called Horner’s on the twenty-fifth floor. The two big oval windows were misted over inside, forcing Tolton to wipe them clean with one of the coarse table cloths. His breath kept splashing against the icy glass, condensing immediately.

Well we did choose a realm suitable for ghosts, the personality said.

I’ve never heard of a ghost that looked like that.

The visitor was within five kilometres of the shell now, about where the filigree of nebula strands began. There was only empty space between it and the habitat now.

Maybe it’s scared to come any closer, the personality said. I am considerably larger.

Have you tried an affinity call?

Yes. It didn’t respond.

Oh. Well. Just a thought.

The visitor left the convoluted weave of the nebula and flashed towards the vast bulk of the habitat. By now its deceptive glamour had reduced it to a rosette of oyster ribbons twirling gracelessly in the wake of a fluctuating warp point. The image of the nebula and its strange borealis storms fluxed and bent as the visitor traversed them; oscillating between iridescent scintillations and a black boundary deeper than an event horizon. Nothing about it remained stable.

It streaked over to within fifty metres of the shell then veered round to follow the curve, wriggling wildly from side to side. The quick serpentine orbit allowed it to cover a considerable portion of the habitat’s exterior.

It’s searching, the personality said. That implies a degree of organisation. It has to be sentient.

Searching for what?

A way in, I imagine. Or something it can recognize, some method of establishing communication.

Do any of the spaceport defences still work? Dariat asked.

You have to be bloody joking. We need all the allies we can get.

Before we fused, you used to be the mother of all suspicious neurotic bastards. I think that would be a preferable attitude for you right now.

Well that’s the effect of your mature calming influence for you. So you’ve only got yourself to blame. But don’t worry, I’m not going to send the MSV after it.

Thank Tarrug for that.

Our visitor should be coming over your horizon any second now. Perhaps your eyes will do better than my sensitive cells.

“Wipe the glass again,” Dariat told Tolton.

The soaking table cloth smeared the moisture in long streaks. Tiny flecks of frost were glistening dull white over the rest of the big oval. Tolton switched off two of his lightsticks. Both of them peered forward. The visitor arched over the rim of the shell, lensing thin spires of vermilion and indigo light as it came. They wavered in the runnels of water, wobbling insubstantially before sinking back down into the visitor’s core. Now all that remained was a black knot in the continuum’s fabric racing over the dark rust-coloured polyp.

Tolton’s weak grin was bloated with uncertainly. “Am I being paranoid, or is that heading towards us?”

In the earlier time and place, long ago and far away, they had called themselves the Orgathé. Now, names had lost all meaning and relevance, or perhaps they themselves had devolved into something else, such was the way of this atrocious existence. There were many others adrift in the dark continuum, sharing their fate. Identity was no longer singular. A myriad of racial traits had blended and faded into a singleton over the aeons.

Purpose, though, purpose remained steadfast. The quest for light and strength, a return to the sweet heights from whence they had all fallen. A dream sustained even within the mélange. Few forms existed now outside of the mélange. The process of diminution claimed every life to fall into these depths. But this one had risen yet again, buoyed up by the tides of chaotic chance that rioted within the mélange, spat out to roam the murk for as long as it had strength. The freeflying state of such escapees was still that of the Orgathé, though the essence of many others rode upon its wings. Its chimerical shape was a tortured mockery of the once glorious avian lords who ruled the swift air currents of their homeworld.

Ahead of it now drifted the exotic object. It was composed of a substance to be found only in the oldest of the Orgathé’s memories, those that pre-dated the dark continuum. How strange that it could barely recognize the antecedent of its own salvation.

Matter. Solid organized matter. Alive with a heat so fierce it took the Orgathé some time to acclimatise to the radiance; elevating itself to a near ecstatic level of warmth. Incredibly, just within the scorching surface, a sheet of life energy burned bright and vigorous. The entire object was a single mighty entity. Yet passive. Vulnerable. This was a feast which would sustain a huge proportion of the mélange for a long time. It might even trigger a total dispersal.

The Orgathé slithered close to the object’s surface, feeling the mind within follow its flight. Vast swirls of rich thought flowed underneath it as it basked in the warmth. But there was no way to reach the abundant life-energy through the hard surface. If the Orgathé attempted to claw its way through, it would surely incinerate itself. Contact with so much heat for so long could probably not be sustained. But the craving within itself from proximity to so much vital life-energy was overwhelming.

There must be some way in. Some orifice or chink. The Orgathé coasted along over the object, heading for the spikes radiating out from the centre. They were smaller, weaker than the rest of it. Long hollow minarets leaking their energy away into the dark continuum. The life-energy was shallower here, the heat not so intense. Each of the structures was broken by thousands of dark ovals, curtained by cooler sheets of transparent matter. Light twinkled briefly through some of them, never lasting long. Except one. A single oval burning steadily.

The Orgathé glided eagerly towards it. Two flames of life-energy gleamed behind the transparent sheet. One naked, the other clad in hot matter; both enraging the Orgathé’s craving. It surged forward.

“FUCK!” Tolton screamed. He dived to one side, scattering tables and chairs. Dariat jumped the other way just as the Orgathé hit the window. Frost blossomed like a living thing, strands of long delicate crystals multiplying across the glass, then reaching out through the air. Shapes moved on the other side of the hoary fur, dark indistinct serpents, thicker than a human torso, that could be tentacles or tongues scrabbling furiously at the outer surface. The unmistakable grinding shriek of deep score lines being ripped into the material penetrated the bar, drowning out Tolton’s terrified cries.

Do something! Dariat wailed.

You name it, I’ll do it.

Tolton was scuttling backwards on his hands and legs, unable to take his eyes from the window. The serpent shapes were writhing with rabid aggression as they clawed their way through. A badly stressed snap sounded above the vicious squealing; corresponding to a thin dark shadow materializing across the frosted window. Furniture was rattling, shaking its way erratically across the floor. Glasses and bottles abandoned on top of the marble bar juddered vigorously and tumbled off.

It’s coming through! Dariat cried. When he tried to clamber to his feet, he discovered he didn’t have the strength. Fatigue was numbing every limb.

“Kill it!” Tolton bellowed.

We can try and zap it, the personality said, like we did the possessed.

Just bloody do it!

It might kill you as well; we don’t know.

You’re part me. Do you seriously think I want that to catch me?

Very well.

The personality began to re-route its patched-up power supply. Diverting current away from the axial light tube and the caverns, pumping the precarious fusion generators up to their maximum output. Electricity poured back into the Djerba starscraper’s organic conductor grid. The first-floor windows blazed with golden light; mechanical and electronic systems came alive in frantic chitters of movement and data emissions. Milliseconds later the second floor sprang back to life. The third, fourth . . .

Dazzling shafts of light sliced out from the Djerba’s windows, piercing the gloom outside. They snapped downward storey by storey towards the beleaguered twenty-fourth floor. The personality gathered its major thought routines and plunged them down into the starscraper, a sensation like diving into a pitch-black well shaft. Bitek networks were swiftly resurrected around its descending mentality.

A dead zone was concentrated around Horner’s window. The external polyp was so cold the personality could no longer calibrate it. Living cells deeper in had frozen solid. The personality could feel vibrations running through the floor as the Orgathé pounded and scraped against the window.

Junctions within the organic conductor web switched polarity, high order sub-routines cancelled the safety limiters. Every erg of power from the fusion generators was channelled into Horner’s. Ceiling strips of electrophorescent cells ignited, flooding the bar with searing white light. Organic conductors behind the walls fused, burning out long lines of polyp in a cascade of amber sparks. Incandescent arcs stormed through the air as a lethal charge of electrons was fired into the external wall.

Coming on top of the heat and life-energy, the electron hammer blow was just too much. The Orgathé recoiled from the window, appendages flailing madly as the streams of alien energy churned within its body. There was a brief glimpse of sinuous chrome-black tendrils bristling with curving blades coiling back protectively around a bulbous midsection. Ragged wing petals began to flex. Then the distortion smeared it with refracted scintillations from the gleaming starscraper, and it shot away at a bruising acceleration. Within seconds it was lost inside the nebula.

Dariat took his arm away from his face. The tremendous barrage of noise and light saturating the bar had faded. A few sparks were still popping out from the deep scorch marks in the walls. The glossy electrophorescent cells had shattered and shrivelled to rain across the floor, their fragments curling up, puffing out licks of smoke.

You all right, my boy? the personality enquired.

Dariat looked down at himself. The feeble yellow glow from Tolton’s remaining lightstick showed his spectral body unchanged. Though possibly more translucent than usual. He still felt terribly weak. I think so. I’m bloody cold, though.

Could have been worse.

Yeah. Dariat felt the personality’s major routines withdrawing from the starscraper. The lights were going off again in the upper floors, autonomic bitek functions shutting down.

He struggled to his knees, shivering intensely. When he looked round he could see ice encrusted on every surface, turning the bar into an arctic grotto. The electrical discharge had melted very little of it. That was probably what had saved them; it was several centimetres thick over the window. And the fracture pattern in the glass underneath was unnervingly pronounced.

Tolton was spasming on the floor, spittle flecking his lips. His hair was rimed with frost. Each shallow panted breath was revealed in a cloud of white vapour.

“Shit.” Dariat staggered over to him. Just in time he remembered not to try and touch the tormented body. Get a medical team down here.

Oh yeah. I’ll get right on it. They should be with you in about three hours.

Shit. He knelt down next to Tolton, and leaned right over, staring into delirious eyes. “Hey.” Limpid fingers clicked right in front of Tolton’s nose. “Hey. Tolton. Can you hear me? Try and steady your breathing. Take a deep breath. Come on! You’ve got to calm your body down. Breathe.”

Tolton’s teeth chittered. He gurgled, cheeks bulging.

“That’s it. Come on. Breathe. Deep. Suck that air down. Please.”

The street poet’s lips compressed slightly, making a whistling sound.

“Good. Good. And again. Come on.”

It took several minutes for Tolton’s bucking to subside. His erratic breathing reduced to sharp gasps. “Cold,” he grunted.

Dariat smiled down at him. “Ho boy. You had me worried there. We really don’t need any more ghosts floating around in here right now.”

“Heart. My heart. God! I thought . . .”

“It’s okay. It’s over.”

Tolton nodded roughly, and tried to lever himself up.

“Stop! You just lie there for another minute longer. There’s no paramedic service any more, remember? First thing we need is some proper food for you. I think there’s a restaurant on this floor.”

“No way. As soon as I can get up, we’re leaving. No more starscrapers.” Tolton coughed, and started to glance round. “Jesus.” He scowled. “Are we safe?”

“Sure. For now, anyway.”

“Did we kill it?”

Dariat grimaced. “Not exactly, no. But we gave it a hell of a fright.”

“That lightning bolt didn’t kill it?”

“No. It flew off, though.”

“Shit. I nearly died.”

“Yeah. But you didn’t. Concentrate on that.”

Tolton slowly eased himself into a sitting position, wincing at each tiny movement. Once he was propped up against a table leg, he reached out and caressed the ice which was engulfing a chair, fingers stroking curiously. He gave Dariat a grim look with badly bloodshot eyes. “This isn’t going to have a happy ending, is it?”

The seven hellhawks glided in towards Monterey, acknowledging the query from the SD network defence as the sensors locked on.

The Sevilla SD network was a hell of a lot stronger than anything we were briefed about, they told Jull von Holger, when he asked how the mission had gone. Seven frigates were lost, and we’re all that’s left of our squadron.

Did the infiltration succeed?

We think over a hundred got through.

Excellent.

Neither side said anything more. Jull von Holger could sense the quiet rage of the surviving hellhawks. He chose not to mention the fact to Emmet Mordden; the hellhawks were all Kiera’s problem.

Go straight to the docking ledges, Hudson Proctor told the hellhawks. We’ve already cleared the pedestals. You’ll be fed as soon as you land. He focused on Kiera’s face. She smiled her brightest ingénue smile, pouring as much gratitude into her thoughts as possible for her deputy to relay. “Well done. I know it’s not easy, but believe me there won’t be many more of these ridiculous seeding missions.” She arched an eyebrow in query to Hudson. “Was there a reply?”

He coloured slightly at the emotional backlash to her little speech that flooded the affinity band. “No. They’re pretty tired.”

“I understand.” Her sweet expression hardened. “End your contact.”

Hudson Proctor nodded curtly, signalling it had been done.

“You hope there ain’t going to be many more seeding flights, you mean,” Luigi said indolently.

The three of them were sitting in one of the smaller, more private lounges above the asteroid’s docking ledges, waiting for the last member of their group to arrive. Kiera’s small revolution had picked up a respectable degree of momentum over the last ten days. The success of the seeding flights had bolstered Al’s popularity and authority considerably. But that triumph came with a high price in terms of starships, and quite a few people were starting to acknowledge that the infiltration campaign was short-termism. Slowly, quietly, Kiera had exploited that. Being able to see the dissatisfaction and worry in people’s minds gave her a handy advantage when it came to spotting potential recruits.

Silvano Richmann came in and took his seat around the coffee table. There was a cluster of bottles in the centre, he poured himself a shot of whisky.

“The Sevilla flotilla is back,” Kiera told him. “Seven frigates and five hellhawks got zapped.”

“Fuck.” Silvano shook his head in dismay. “Al’s putting together another fifteen of these missions. He just doesn’t see it.”

“He sees it the way he wants to see it,” Kiera said. “They’re successful in that they’re landing infiltrators each time. The Confederation is going apeshit. We’re knocking off five of their planets a day. It buys him complete respect and loyalty with the Organization down on the planet.”

“While my fleet gets chopped to shit,” Luigi snapped. “That goddamn whore Jezzibella. She’s got him by the balls.”

“Not just your fleet,” Kiera said. “I’m losing hellhawks fast. Much more of this, and they’ll leave.”

“Where to?” Silvano asked. “They’ve got to stick with you. That was a neat sting you pulled on them with the food.”

“The Edenists keep making offers to try and lure them away,” Hudson said. “Etchells keeps us informed. The latest offer is that they’ll actually accept the blackhawk host personality into their habitat neural strata, leaving our guys as the only soul in there. In exchange they get all the food they want, providing they just cooperate with the Edenists, help them find out about our powers.”

“Shit,” Silvano muttered. “We gotta stop this. I’d be mighty tempted by any offer that got rid of this body’s host soul.”

“Wouldn’t we all,” Kiera said. She sat back and sipped at her wine. “Okay, the question is, how far are you prepared to go?”

“Pretty goddamn obvious for me,” Luigi said. “I’ll waste that shit Capone myself. Busting me down to a fucking errand boy. Nobody could have handled Tranquillity any different.”

“Silvano?”

“He’s got to go. But there’s one condition for me signing up with you. And it ain’t negotiable.”

“What’s that?” Kiera asked, though she was fairly sure she knew. Silvano was feared as Al’s chief enforcer, but he did have one major difference with his boss.

“After we do this, there are no more non-possessed in the Organization. We take them all out. Understood?”

“Suits me,” Kiera said.

“No way!” Luigi shouted. “I can’t run my fucking fleet with just possessed crews. You know that. You’re shitting on me here, man.”

“Yeah? Who says there’s going to be a fucking fleet after this. Right, Kiera? We’re doing this for our own safety. We’re going to take New California out of here; out of this universe. Just like all the other possessed have done. And for that, we can’t afford no non-possessed to be around. Come on, Luigi, you know that. As long as there’s one of them left, they’re going to be plotting and scheming how to get rid of us. For Christ’s sake. We steal their bodies from them. If you was alive right now, you wouldn’t give jack shit about anything else other than getting them back from us.” He slammed his tumbler back down on the table. “We eliminate all the non-possessed, or there’s no deal.”

“Then there’s no fucking deal,” Luigi stormed.

Kiera held up her hands. “Boys, boys, this is how Al wins. You ever heard of divide and rule? All of us have different interests, and the only way we can hang on to them is if we’re part of the Organization. Only the Organization needs a fleet, and hellhawks, and lieutenants that have to be kept in line.” She shot Silvano a significant look. “He’s made it complicated so that we have to support him to keep our own places. What we’ve got to do is dismantle the Organization, but rig whatever’s next so that we three come out on top.”

“Like what?” Luigi asked suspiciously.

“Okay, you want the fleet back, right? Tell me why?”

“Because it’s fucking mine, you dumb broad. I built that fleet up from nothing. I was here right from the start, the day Al walked into San Angeles City Hall.”

“Fair enough. But all the fleet did was make you a player. Do you really want to risk flying to Confederation planets and going up against their SD networks? They’re getting wise to us now. These seeding flights are pissing them off bad. They’re killing us out there, Luigi.”

“So? Like I should care. I’m the admiral. I don’t have to go with them every time.”

“The whole fleet doesn’t have to go anywhere, Luigi; that’s the point. What you need is to exchange the fleet for something else that will keep you in the game, right?”

Luigi eyed her cautiously. “Maybe.”

“That’s what we’ve got to work out between the three of us. Right now, we can carry the Organization if we eliminate Capone. But the Organization’s a dead end. Dishing out tokens instead of money, for Christ’s sake. If we take it over, we’ve got to use it to establish a new type of government. One that has us at the top.”

“Like what?” Silvano asked. “The second New California leaves this universe then nobody needs any kind of government.”

“Says who?” Kiera sneered. “You’ve seen the cities down there. Unless the Organization keeps putting the squeeze on the farmers to supply food, they’d collapse overnight. If New California escapes this universe, everyone on it is going to have to turn into some kind of medieval peasant just to stay alive. And that’s such bullshit. Five per cent of the population working in the fields can sustain the rest of us. Now I don’t know what kind of society we can build on the other side, but I’m damned if I’m going to live in a mud hut and spend my days walking behind a horse’s arse to plough a field. Especially when someone else can be made to do it for me.”

“So what are you saying here?” Silvano asked. “That we keep the farmers working while the rest of us live it up?”

“Basically, yeah. It’s just like what I’ve done with the hellhawks, but on a much bigger scale. We have to keep the farmers farming, and we have to be in charge of distributing the food to the urban areas. Convert the Organization into a giant supplier; and the only people who get supplied, are the ones who we say.”

“You’d need a fucking army for that!” Luigi exclaimed.

Kiera gestured magnanimously. “There you are then. That’s what you turn the fleet into. Find a portable weapon that’s effective against the possessed: something like those bastard serjeants use on Mortonridge, manufacture it up here, and equip our supporters with it. Use the same chain of command network that’s already in place, but with a land army to back it up instead of the SD platforms.”

“That might work,” Silvano said. “So if Luigi’s got himself an army, what do I get?”

“Communications are vital, otherwise this whole thing will just collapse. And we’d need to be more subtle with the farmers than forcing them at gunpoint. That’s an enforcer’s job.”

He poured himself another whisky. “Okay. Let’s talk about it.”

Western Europe always took his dogs for a walk himself. Dog ownership was a healthy reminder of responsibility; you either do it properly or not at all. There weren’t many crises which could make him skip a day. Though he suspected one of his staff was going to have to start substituting fairly soon.

The formal lawns extended for over three hundred metres from the back of the house (they were yards back in the days when he bought the estate, but even he had fallen to using that appalling modern French metric system now). A hedge of ancient yews marked the end, ten metres high, laden with their squishy dull-red berries. He pushed through the gap marked by crumbling stone pillars that used to be gateposts, making a mental note to get a gardening construct to prune the twigs. The carpet of dry needles compressed beneath his brogues as the Labradors scampered round him. It was meadowland beyond, the shaggy grass thick with daisies and buttercups. A gentle slope led down to a long still lake eight hundred metres away. He whistled softly, and threw his stick.

“Found them,” North America datavised.

“Who?”

“The possessed Quinn Dexter left behind in New York. Just to make you more insufferable, you were right. He went for the Light Bringer sect.”

“Ah.” The Labradors found the stick, one of them clamped it in his jaw. Western Europe slapped his hands on his thighs, and the dogs started to bound back to him. “How bad is it?”

“Not too bad, I believe. I lost the High Magus, of course. I guess he suicided. But there are several actives left. Two of them called me before the energistic effect glitched their neural nanonics. They’re taking over the covens one at a time. Eight down already, including the arcology headquarters in the Leicester skyscraper.”

“Numbers?”

“That’s the good news. About ten possessed to each coven. The moron acolytes are actually welcoming them, and doing as they’re told. Their new masters are just sitting tight, and holding some pretty gross orgies. They’ve made sure each coven’s electronics are switched off, not that many of their units were ever interfaced with the net anyway.”

“I knew it. They’re moving with a purpose.”

“Definite infiltration tactics. They’ve got their foothold, now they’re waiting.”

“If they’re spreading to each dome, then some of them must be on the move.”

“Yes, I know. And they’ve had it easy in all the confusion. With all those riots resulting from the vac-train shutdown there’s been a lot of vandalism; that makes it tough for the AI to locate glitches.”

“So when are you going to hit the covens?”

“Good question. I wanted your opinion on that. If I hit them now, then whoever’s moving about will be warned and go to ground. That’ll leave New York vulnerable.”

Western Europe took the stick from the Labrador, and paused. “Yes, but if you wait until every coven is taken over, you’ll have a lot of the bastards to deal with. Someone will inevitably get through the police cordons, and you’ll be back in the same leaky boat. How many covens can you monitor in real time?”

“All of them. That’s already being done. Those I have no direct access to are being watched by agents.”

“Then you’ve got it covered. Wait until a group of possessed shows up at a new coven, then take them all out together.”

“And if there’s more than one group moving round?”

“I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid enough. What sort of assault were you planning?”

“GISD tactical team, with shoot to kill orders. Wipe each coven out, I don’t want prisoners to interrogate. Fletcher is still cooperating with Halo’s science teams.”

“Given the stakes, here, I’d suggest using a gamma pulse against them first. You’ll get peripheral casualties, but it’ll be nothing like as bad as an SD strike. Send the tactical teams in to secure and mop up afterwards.”

“All right. I can live with that.”

“We might even get a vote of confidence from our illustrious colleagues.”

“Not even this century’s geneering can make pigs fly yet. I’ll get the assault organized for three hundred hours EST.”

“If you need any help, just whistle.” Western Europe smiled happily, and slung the stick high into the air.

Not even B7 could block news of events inside New York from spilling out across the global net. Speculation had been hot and intense ever since the arcology’s vac-trains had been shut down after the Dome One “incident.” Several riots had been captured by rover reporters; two of whom had been badly injured during the coverage, adding extra spice to the sensevise. Then eleven hours later, the North American Commissioner had appeared before the press once more to announce the investigation had been completed, and confirm the incident was not caused by the possessed. It was in fact a professional assassination carried out in Grand Central Station involving a sophisticated weapons implant and a chameleon suit. Business rivals of the deceased Bud Johnson were currently being sought for questioning.

The vac-trains had been re-opened. The rioters and looters had cleared the streets. The police reinforcements had been stood down. Celebrity news presenters were given extended programmes to cover the paranoia raging across the planet. The arrival of the Mount’s Delta appeared to have acted as the trigger for a multitude of small events that were blamed on the possessed, culminating in the Grand Central Station disturbance. And Capone’s recent switch in tactics to flying infiltration attacks against Confederation planets served to exacerbate people’s fears. The Confederation Navy and local SD networks seemed unable to prevent the Organization’s strike flotillas. After the quarantine appeared to be preventing the spread, worlds were starting to fall again. Everyone, ran the feeling, was vulnerable.

But the lifting of the vac-train restrictions eased the tension a little, right up until 2:50 EST when they were abruptly shut again. Frustrated commuters datavised the information to the news agencies within ten seconds. New York’s rover reporters, who had descended en masse into the arcology’s bars after a hard day’s sensationalising, were hauled back out onto the concrete canyons by their editors. Agencies which datavised information requests to the arcology’s civic authority were met with blank puzzlement. Nobody had told the graveyard shift about the vac-trains. The police precinct houses were equally baffled. Even the urgent requests to in-house sources produced a blank, at least in the ten minutes that counted.

With all of the B7 supervisors on-line and observing, North America gave the order to launch the assault.

The Internal Security Directorate tactical teams had been arriving in New York ever since the vac-trains started running again. By the time the assault was launched, there were over eight hundred personnel deployed around the various sect covens. They were all armed with projectile weapons loaded with chemical or electric rounds. Complementing them were the gamma lasers. Intended for anti-terrorist interception situations, they were powerful enough to penetrate at least five metres of carbon-concrete. Such a range would allow the teams to strike at targets holed up deep inside skyscrapers and megatowers. One would usually be sufficient to eliminate an entire room full of hostiles instantaneously.

North America had ringed each coven with nine, while the Leicester skyscraper had fifteen ranged against it. The supervisor’s deepest worry was that the possessed with their extended senses would discover the preparations. To try and deny them any hint, engineering mechanoids had been used throughout the day to unpack and install the gamma lasers in surrounding buildings. Give-away human supervision had been kept to an absolute minimum. As well as the gamma lasers, North America had the exits and service tunnels rigged to electrify anyone who scuttled down them. That was the most dangerous aspect of the work, but again mechanoids with New York’s civic service emblem on their sides trundled along modifying wires and cables without drawing questions or interest.

The tactical teams had assembled several blocks away to avoid attention. North America started to move them forward simultaneously with closing down the vac-trains. He also closed down all road traffic and metro transit carriages inside the arcology, and sealed the domes from each other; an aspect the news agencies didn’t realize until a lot later. According to every asset and functional bug infiltrated into the covens, neither the possessed nor the acolytes were aware of the preparations. They didn’t even know the tactical teams were advancing.

The gamma ray lasers fired at 2:55 EST. The fifteen beams transfixing the Leicester skyscraper swept through the lower eight stories which made up the sect’s headquarters. They used a scan pattern, switching between vertical and horizontal to cover every cubic centimetre. When the beams were aimed right through the core of the skyscraper, the energy was absorbed by the structure, while furnishings and composite walls ignited instantly under the intense radiation barrage. Thick, radiant orange lines were scratched across the carbon-concrete support pillars and floors as the beams traversed the building. The air was superheated, dissolving into its component atoms. Windows detonated outward from the appalling pressure, showering the street below with daggers of glass.

Fire sprinklers burst into life, only for their water to vaporise first into steam then clouds of ions. Glaring blue and violet streamers jetted out of the smashed windows, and fountained up the skyscraper’s elevator shafts. Ruptured air-conditioning ducts provided secondary routes for the heatstorm to pervade the building. The entire lower floors were engulfed in a dazzling fireball.

Human bodies caught within the flexing three-dimensional mesh of beams burst apart from the terrible energy input. Their water content exploded into steam as the carbon combusted. When the beams reached the outer sections of the skyscraper, they were powerful enough to pierce clean though the walls. Surrounding skyscrapers were strafed with the radiation, resulting in vast tracts of damage. Then the sharp spires of ions exhaled by the Leicester played across their outer walls, igniting dozens of ordinary fires.

The gamma ray lasers switched off. The night was filled with the roar of flames and the screams of those being burnt alive. There was enough light thrown out from the fires to light the entire district. Unharmed residents of the nearby buildings lucky enough to live on the lower floors rushed onto the street; while those higher up could only stare out helplessly as the flames took hold. The images they relayed to the news agencies, which were distributed across the planet in real-time, showed the GISD tactical teams marching down every approach road to the Leicester. Against the raging orange flames, their heat-proof flexarmour suits appeared as matt-black silhouettes. Weapons with long snouts were cradled casually on their arms as they walked into the conflagration with astounding nonchalance.

Three times, figures rushed out of the skyscraper’s main entrance doors, making their bid for freedom. They were like fire monsters, flames shooting from every part of their bloated figures. The tactical team guns spat short pulses of turquoise flame with quiet efficiency, and the fiery creatures crumpled to burn unhindered on the wide sidewalk.

It was those scenes of perfunctory extermination which finally convinced the world that the possessed had somehow penetrated the titanic defences of the Halo. The political fallout was considerable. A motion of impeachment was put before the Govcentral Grand Senate, condemning the President for not informing the senatorial defence committee in advance. The President, who could hardly publicly admit to knowing nothing about the situation, fired the chiefs of GISD Bureaus 1 through 4, for gross insubordination and overreaching their authority. The GISD’s New York chief was charged with reckless homicide, and put under immediate arrest. Such machinations went almost unnoticed by the public, who were fed a continual stream of updates of the on-the-ground aftermath by the news agencies.

Once the tactical teams had confirmed that there were no possessed left alive in any of the sect covens, they withdrew. Only then were the emergency services allowed in. It took ten hours for the fire department mechanoids to extinguish the last fires. Paramedic crews followed them through the burnt out floors. The arcology hospitals were swamped by casualties. Preliminary insurance damage estimates ran into hundred of millions of G-dollars. Dome One’s mayor, in conjunction with the other fourteen mayors of the arcology, instigated an official day of mourning, and opened a bereavement fund.

Officially, one thousand two hundred and thirty-three people died in the assault against the New York possessed; nearly half as a result of being hit by gamma radiation. The rest were either burned or asphyxiated. Over nine thousand needed hospital treatment for minor burns, shock, and other injuries. Double that number lost their homes; with several hundred businesses forced to try and relocate. The vac-trains in and out of New York remained closed.

“Well?” North Pacific asked. It was five hours after the tactical teams had finished their sweep of the covens, and B7 had reconvened to hear the genuine results.

“We got a hundred and eight possessed, that’s the best estimate I can provide. There wasn’t a hell of a lot left for the forensic crew to analyse after the gamma lasers finished.”

“I’m more interested in the ones you didn’t eliminate.”

“Eight of the electrocution traps we rigged along possible escape routes were triggered. The teams pulled eleven corpses out of various ducts and service tunnels.”

“Quit stalling!” South America said. “Did any of them get out?”

“Probably, yes. Forensics thinks maybe three or four people got past the electrocution traps. There’s no way of telling if they were possessed or not, but it would take one inhumanly tough mother to survive what we threw at them.”

“Shit! We’re right back where we started. You’re going to have to initiate this kind of slaughter operation each time they regroup. Only now they don’t have any convenient sects to flee back to.”

“Well this time, I’m going to insist on keeping New York’s vac-trains shut,” North Pacific said. “We can’t let them get out of New York.”

“I quite agree,” Western Europe said.

“Only because you can’t risk another vote.”

“There’s no need to get personal. We remain on top of the situation.”

“Really? Where’s Dexter, then?”

“When the time comes, I will eliminate him.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

The K5 star had a catalogue number, but that was all. Only three planets were in orbit around it, two of them smaller than Mars, and a gas giant fifty-thousand kilometres in diameter. Undistinguished in astronomical terms, it lay forty-one light-years outside the loose boundary of space claimed by the Confederation. There had been a single scoutship visit in 2530, which quickly established its worthlessness. As far as official records were concerned, that was the first and last time humans had visited the barren system. Certainly the Navy never bothered with it; their patrols were stretched thinly enough as it was searching for illegal activity within the Confederation and through the stars fringing the boundary. Although the surrounding wreath of stars was an obvious location for illegal operations (and several highly dubious independent colony ventures), forty-one light-years was just too far away to justify the expense of regular inspection flights.

Such a safeguard made it ideal for the black cartel. Their antimatter station orbited five million kilometres from the star’s surface, a closeness which stretched human materials science to its limit. The radiation, heat, particle, and magnetic forces it encountered were appalling. An approaching ship would see it as a simple black disk sailing across the incandescent solar glare. Sixty kilometres in diameter, it cast a significant cone-shaped umbra behind it; a zone insulated from the star’s heat, the one place where hell’s proverbial snowflake might just have survived. The surface facing the star was a radial concertina array of solid state cells absorbing the incredible blast of heat and converting it directly into electricity. At the back they glowed a gentle pink, utilizing their own shade to radiate the immense thermal load away into space. In total, the array was capable of generating over one and a half terawatts of electricity.

The antimatter production system itself was housed in a cluster of boxy silver-white industrial modules right in the centre of the array. The mundane method of churning out antimatter was essentially unchanged since the late Twentieth Century; although the levels of scale and efficiency had risen considerably since the first few experimental antiprotons had been manufactured in high-energy physics laboratories. Production requires individual protons to be accelerated until their energy becomes greater than a giga-electron-volt, at which point each one has more energy in its motion than its mass. Once that state has been achieved, they are collided with heavy nuclei, resulting in a spray of elementary particles that includes antiprotons, antielectrons, and antineutrons. These are then separated, collected, cooled, and merged into antihydrogen. But it is that initial proton acceleration stage which absorbs the phenomenal amount of electricity produced by the solar array in its entirety.

The whole operation was overseen by a crew of twenty-five technicians, stationed in a large, heavily-shielded rotating carbotanium wheel that floated deep inside the array’s umbra. They had now been joined by eight members of the Organization to keep them in line. Taking over the station had been absurdly easy.

Because the black cartel took the elementary precaution of installing its own modified neural nanonics in everyone who knew of the station’s location, there could only ever be two kinds of visitor: the Confederation Navy on a search and destroy mission, or a legitimate buyer. The arrival of Capone’s lieutenants came as a severe shock to the crew. The few hand weapons available were utterly useless against the possessed; their only other option was to kamikaze. Once the Organization’s terms and conditions had been laid on the line, that was postponed indefinitely. The same kind of uneasy stand-off balance between need and fear that had claimed New California settled across the station.

After supplying the first Organization convoy with every gram of antimatter held in storage, the station had been operating a full production schedule ever since, attempting to cope with Capone’s desperate demands for more. Starships came from New California every five or six days for new supplies.

Admiral Saldana’s squadron made no attempt at stealth or subtlety when it jumped into the system, emerging twenty-five million kilometres from the star. Navy starships always had a tremendous advantage against the stations they hunted. Deep inside the star’s gravity field, there could be no quick escape for the station’s crew. Defensive weapons were almost useless. Not even antimatter propulsion and warheads could produce their usual overwhelming advantage; in such proximity to the star, combat wasp sensors were almost blind.

Standard procedure for the Navy starships was to launch a volley of kinetic projectiles in a retrograde orbit. It was a tactic that would quickly exhaust the station’s stock of drones, leaving them with beam weapons alone. Against a swarm of ten thousand harpoons, their chances of vaporizing every one before it hit was effectively nil. That was assuming the station sensors were even capable of locating the incoming missiles to begin with. In most cases the hellish solar environment completely masked their approach. And the Navy vessels would never issue a warning, the station might never know of their presence until the first missile struck.

All the attackers needed was a single strike against the production system. Any large explosion would inevitably set off a chain reaction within the antimatter storage chambers. The resulting blast could at times be five or six times the size of a planet-buster, depending on how much of the substance was in store.

This time it was going to have to be a little different. Meredith Saldana waited impatiently on the Arikara’s bridge while the voidhawks deployed around the star in small swallow manoeuvres. Each of them launched a pack of small sensor satellites to scan the huge magnetosphere in which they were all immersed.

Locating the station was easy enough, though the sheer volume of space they were searching through made it a lengthy task. The Arikara’s tactical situation computer started to receive datavises from the satellites, blending them into a harmonized picture of the whole near-solar environment. When the information was complete, it showed the star as a dark sphere surrounded with graded shells of pale gold translucence. The innermost seethed like a restless sea as the magnetic forces fluxed and coiled, above that they smoothed out considerably.

A tiny knot of twisted copper light was sliding along a circular, five million kilometre orbit. The squadron’s comparative position was fed in, and Meredith began issuing orders. Because of their vulnerability to the star’s heat and radiation, the voidhawks maintained their orbits, enabling them to keep watch for any emerging starships. The Adamist starships flew inward. Eight frigates were vectored into high inclination orbits, a location from which they could launch a kinetic assault on the station. The remaining starships, including Lady Macbeth, aligned themselves on an interception course and accelerated along it at three gees.

When they were three million kilometres away, the Arikara pointed her main communication dish on the station, and boosted the signal to full strength.

“This communiqué is directed to the station commander,” Meredith datavised. “This is the Confederation Navy ship Arikara. Your illegal operation is now terminated. Ordinarily, you would be executed for your actions in producing antimatter, but I have been authorized to offer you transport to a Confederation penal colony planet if you cooperate with us. This offer is also applicable to any possessed who are resident at the station. I will require your answer within one hour. Failure to respond will be taken as a refusal to cooperate, and you will be destroyed.” He datavised the flight computer to repeat the message, and the squadron waited.

It took ten minutes for a static-heavy signal to emerge from the station. “This is Renko, I’m the guy Al left in charge around here. And I’m telling you to get the fuck out of here before we smear your pansy asses across the sun. You got that clear, pal?”

Meredith glanced across the bridge’s acceleration couches to where Lieutenant Grese was lying. The intelligence officer managed to grin, despite the gee force. “That’s a break,” he said. “We got Capone’s source, no matter what the outcome.”

“I believe the Navy is due a break,” Meredith said. “Especially our section of it.”

“He’ll have to stop those bloody infiltration flights now. His fleet will need all the antimatter they’ve got left to defend New California.”

“Indeed.” Meredith was almost cheerful when he ordered the computer to datavise a reply to the station. “Consult your crew, Renko. You’re in the losing position here. All we have to do is launch a single missile once an hour. You have to fire five each time just to make sure it doesn’t get through. And we’re in no hurry, we can keep shooting at you for a couple of weeks if we have to. There’s just no way you can win. Now are you going to accept my offer, or do you want to go back to the beyond?”

“Nice try, but you don’t mean it. Not for us, leastways. I know you guys, you’ll slam us into zero-tau the second we put our hands up.”

“For what it’s worth, I am Rear Admiral Meredith Saldana, and you have my word that you will be given passage to an uninhabited world capable of supporting human life. Consider your alternatives. If we attack the station, you go back to the beyond, if I’m lying about transporting you to a planet you go back. But there is the very strong possibility that I’m not lying. Can you really reject that hope?”

Along with the rest of the squadron, Joshua had to wait another twenty minutes for the answer. Eventually, Renko agreed to surrender. “Looks like we’re on,” Joshua said. They were accelerating hard again, preventing him from smiling. But there was no hiding the rise of excitement in his labouring voice.

“Christ, the other side of the nebula,” Liol marvelled. “What’s the furthest anyone’s ever been before?”

“A voidhawk scout group travelled six hundred and eighty light years from Earth in 2570,” Samuel replied. “Their course took them directly galactic north, not in this direction.”

“I missed that,” Ashly complained. “Was there anything interesting out there?”

Samuel closed his eyes, questioning the voidhawks racing along their orbits millions of kilometres away. “Nothing unusual, or dramatic. Stars with possible terracompatible planets, stars without. No sentient xenoc species.”

“The Meridian fleet went further,” Beaulieu said.

“Only according to legend,” Dahybi countered. “Nobody knows where they vanished to. In any case, that was centuries ago.”

“Logically then, they must have gone a long way if no one’s ever found them.”

“Found the wreckage, more like.”

“Such pessimism is bad for you.”

“Really? Hey, Monica.” Dahybi lifted one hand to make an appeal before the acceleration made him lower it fast again. “Do your lot know where they went? It could be important if they’re waiting out there for us.”

Monica stared stubbornly at the compartment’s ceiling, a headache building behind her compressed eyeballs that no program could rid her of. She really hated high gees. “No,” she datavised (her throat was suffering along with the rest of her), irritated she couldn’t put any emphasis into her digitalized speech. Not that snapping at the crew would endear her to them, but their relentless discussions of utter trivia were starting to chafe. And she’d possibly got a month or more to go. “The ESA was in its infancy back when the Meridian fleet was launched. Even today I doubt we’d bother planting assets in with a bunch of paradise seeking fools.”

“I don’t want to know what’s there,” Joshua said. “The whole point of this mission is discovery. We’re real explorers going out on a limb, first for at least a century.”

“Amen to that,” Ashly said.

“Where we are now is new for most people,” Liol said. “Just look at that station.”

“Standard industrial modules,” Dahybi said. “Hardly exotic or inspiring.” Liol sighed sadly.

“Okay, we’re getting close to injection point,” Joshua announced. “Systems review, please. How’s our fuselage holding out?” The flight computer was datavising images from the localized sensors into his neural nanonics. Lady Mac’s thermo dump panels were fully extended, constantly rotating to present their narrow edges towards the raging star. Their flat surfaces were glowing radiant pink as they expelled the ship’s accumulated heat. He’d programmed a permanent spin into their vector, a fifteen minute cycle to ensure the immense thermal input was distributed evenly across the fuselage. Fine manoeuvring was slow, given the additional reaction mass they were carrying, but the balance compensation programs were handling it providing he kept tweaking them.

“No hot spots yet,” Sarha reported. “That extra layer of nulltherm foam is doing its job quite well. But it is picking up a lot of particle radiation, far more than we’re used to. We’ll have to watch that.”

“Should lose it when we get behind the shield,” Liol said. “Won’t be long now.”

“See?” Beaulieu told Dahybi. “You are surrounded by optimists.”

The squadron’s interception ships were sliding into an orbital slot three thousand kilometres behind the antimatter station. If Renko did decide to switch off the storage confinement chambers, the radiation impact from the blast would tax the shielding on the starships to an uncomfortable degree. But they should be safe. So far, he appeared to be cooperating.

Commander Kroeber was handling the negotiation on how the hand over was to be accomplished. The civil starship already docked at the station was to depart with everyone on board. It would rendezvous with one of the squadron’s marine cruisers. The possessed would disembark and proceed directly to the brig under heavily armed guard where they would stay for the duration of the flight. Any indication of them using their energistic power, for whatever reason, would result in a forty-thousand-volt current being run through the brig. The cruiser, accompanied by two frigates, would fly directly to an uninhabited terracompatible world (currently in the middle of an ice age) where the possessed would be shot down to the tropical-zone surface in one-way descent capsules, with a supply of survival equipment. There would be no further contact with that planet by the Confederation, apart from delivering any further possessed with whom similar exceptional deals had been made.

Kroeber’s other offer, that they help the CNIS with its research into energistic power until such time as a solution was found for possession, was summarily rejected.

Once the possessed were safely incarcerated, another marine cruiser would rendezvous with the starship and take off the station’s regular crew ready to transport them to a penal planet. Complete control of the station systems was to be handed over to the Navy technical crew, who would remote test their new domain. If total access was confirmed, a third marine cruiser would dock with the station itself, and perform a boarding and securement manoeuvre.

After some haggling, mainly over the contents of the survival equipment they could take with them down to the icy planet, Renko agreed to the arrangement. Lady Macbeth’s crew watched the proceedings through the sensors. The hand-over went remarkably smoothly, taking just less than a day. A datavise from the first marine cruiser showed the possessed, dressed defiantly in double-breasted suits, laughing brashly as they were led into the brig. The station crew looked frankly relieved that they’d escaped with exile. They datavised over their access codes without a qualm.

“You may proceed to docking, Captain Calvert,” Admiral Saldana datavised. “Lieutenant Grese informs me we are now in full command of the station. There is enough antimatter in storage for your requirements.”

“Thank you, sir,” Joshua replied. He triggered the fusion drives. The simple course over to the station had been plotted for hours. Accelerate, flip, and decelerate. They were already inside the station’s umbra and commencing final rendezvous manoeuvres when the Organization’s convoy arrived.

“Eleven of them, sir,” Lieutenant Rhoecus said. “Confirmed emergence twenty-three million miles out from the star, eighty-nine million miles from the station.”

“Threat assessment?” the admiral enquired. How typical, he thought, that something should come along to thwart the squadron’s mission once again.

“Minimal.” The Edenist liaison officer appeared almost happy. “Ilex and Oenone report there are five hellhawks and six frigates in the enemy formation. Their hellhawks can’t swallow down to us, not at this altitude. And even if we assume the frigates are armed with antimatter combat wasps, they would take hours to reach us accelerating continually. I’ve never heard of a combat wasp that has an hour’s fuel in it.”

“They’d have to be custom built,” Grese said. “Which is unlikely for Capone. And even if they do exist, we can evade them easily at this distance.”

“Then Calvert can carry on?” the admiral asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Kroeber, inform the Lady Macbeth to proceed as planned. I’d appreciate it if the good captain didn’t dawdle.”

“Aye, sir.”

Meredith reviewed the tactical display. The Oenone was barely five million kilometres from the cluster of Organization ships. “Lieutenant Rhoecus, voidhawks to group together twenty-five million kilometres directly above the antimatter station. I don’t want them isolated, it might give the hellhawks ideas. Commander Kroeber, move the rest of the squadron up to rendezvous with the voidhawks, the frigates in high inclination orbits to meet us there. Two of our frigates to remain with the station until Lady Macbeth has completed her fuelling. Once they’re at a safe distance, the station is to be destroyed.”

“Aye, sir.”

Meredith instructed the tactical computer to compile options. The resulting assessment just about matched his own opinion. The two sides were evenly matched. He had more ships, but the Organization was expected to be armed with antimatter combat wasps. And if he did order the squadron up to intercept, it would take hours to reach them. The Organization ships could simply jump away, leaving only the voidhawks to pursue them—who would then be outgunned.

Effectively, it was a stand-off. Neither side could do much to affect the other.

Yet I cannot allow them to go unchallenged, Meredith thought, it sets a bad precedent. “Lieutenant Grese? What do we know about the non-possessed crews on board Organization ships? Just how much of a hold does Capone have on them?”

“According to the debriefings we’ve conducted; they all have family being held captive on Monterey. Capone is very careful about who is given command authority over antimatter. So far it’s a strategy that’s worked for him. A number of crews on ordinary Organization starships have managed to eliminate their possessed officers and desert. But we’ve never had any indication of attempted mutiny on ships equipped with antimatter.”

“Pity,” Meredith grunted as the Arikara started to accelerate up to the rendezvous with the voidhawks. “Nevertheless, I’ll issue them with the same ultimatum as the station was given. Who knows, the opportunity to capitulate might be enough to spark a small rebellion.”

Etchells listened to the admiral’s message as it was beamed out to the convoy. Slippery, vague promises of pardons and safe passage. None of it was relevant to him.

We repeat Edenism’s offer to you, the voidhawks added. You may transfer your host’s personality over to us, and we will provide your nutrient fluid. All we ask in return is your help in finding a satisfactory resolution.

Don’t any of you bastards even answer, Etchells warned his fellow hellhawks. They’re running scared. They wouldn’t make that kind of offer unless they were absolutely desperate.

He could sense the uncertainty rumbling through their affinity bond. But none of them were brave enough to challenge him directly. Satisfied he’d kept them in line for now, Etchells asked the convoy’s commander what he intended to do. Withdraw, came the answer, there’s nothing else we can do.

Etchells wasn’t so sure. The Navy hadn’t destroyed the station. And that went against everything the Confederation stood for. There had to be a phenomenal reason for such a change of policy. We should stay, he told the convoy commander. They cannot engage us for hours yet. That gives us a chance to discover what they are doing here. If they’re going to start using antimatter against us, Capone should be told. Reluctantly, the commander agreed. However, he did order the Adamist ships to accelerate towards a new jump coordinate that would take them back to New California, leaving the hellhawks to observe the station.

It was difficult to look directly into that dangerous glare. Etchells’s sensor blisters began to suffer from glare spots, similar to purple after-images which plagued human eyes. He started to roll lazily, flicking his ebony wingtips to bank against the gusts of solar particles, switching the view between the blisters. Even then, concentrating on that tiny speck millions of kilometres away was inordinately stressful. A headache began to pound away inside his stolen neurone structure.

None of the electronic sensors loaded into his cargo cradles were any use, they were mostly military systems, intended for close defence work. And his distortion field couldn’t reach that far. The visual spectrum provided him with the greatest coverage. He could see the Navy’s Adamist ships accelerating up out of the star’s enormous gravity field, little sparks of light, actually brighter than the photosphere.

After half an hour, three more fusion drives ignited around the station. Two of them started to follow the Navy squadron. The last one took a different course altogether; curving round the star’s southern hemisphere on a very high inclination trajectory.

Etchells opened his beak wide to let out an imaginary warble of success. Whatever it was doing, the lone starship had to be the reason behind the Navy’s strange action. He issued a flurry of instructions to the other hellhawks. Despite his brute-boy attitude, Etchells had actually absorbed a great deal of information from his host’s mentality. The facade of toughness was a deliberate ploy—always let your opponents believe you’re dumber than you are. Becoming Kiera’s most dependable and trusted hellhawk made sure she wouldn’t risk him on those mad seeding flights, or any other dangerous actions. Convoy escort was about the safest duty to pull.

Wasted decades spent bumming round pointless mercenary actions across the Confederation, had taught him to disguise his true potential. Survival was dependent on intelligence and the lowest cunning, not worthy courage. And he knew for sure that surviving his current situation was going to take a great deal of ingenuity. Like Rocio in the Mindori, he had come to admire his new bitek form, finding it utterly superior to a human body. Quite how he could hang on to it was a question he’d been unable to resolve. There would be no place for hellhawks in the place where possessed took their planets to escape the universe, he was sure. And the Confederation would never rest until they’d solved the problem of how to evict souls back into the beyond permanently.

So he bided his time, keeping a giant yellowing eye open for some opportunity to save his own ass, and to hell with his comrades.

The Navy’s unconventional behaviour might just be the break he’d been looking for.

When the last three starships were thirty thousand kilometres from the antimatter station, it exploded with a violence which outshone the prominence arching through the chromosphere below. As if in acknowledgement of their defeat, the hellhawks swallowed away.

The voidhawks analysed the way their distortion fields applied energy against space-time to open a wormhole interstice. All five hellhawks appeared to be heading back to New California.

They have left the remaining frigates extremely vulnerable, Auster, Ilex’s captain, reported to Rhoecus. What are the admiral’s orders?

Hold your position. If you attack they will just jump clear. We could harass them all the way home, but there is no tactical advantage to be gained from that. Our objective has been accomplished.

Very well.

Syrinx.

Yes, Rhoecus.

Oenone is cleared to rendezvous with the Lady Macbeth. The admiral wishes you both bon voyage.

Thank you.

Etchells didn’t believe the voidhawks would follow, certainly not instantaneously. The hellhawks all swallowed ten light-years clear of the star, then swallowed again three seconds later. Unless a voidhawk had been with them to observe the second swallow, there was no way of knowing where they’d gone.

Four of them carried on back to New California. Etchells returned directly to the star, emerging twenty-two million kilometres above its south pole. With the voidhawks all clustered together in their twenty-five million kilometre equatorial orbit, there was no way they could detect his wormhole terminus opening and closing. His position was ideal to observe the Navy starships flying out from their low orbit. His sensor blisters didn’t have to focus against the overwhelming white blaze. Even his headache started to fade.

He did keep a cursory watch on the Navy ships as they rose out of the gravity field, but it was the lone ship heading south that interested him. When it was twenty million kilometres from the star its drive cut out. Etchells projected its course, and started to check his captured spatial memories. Given its jump alignment there were twenty possible Confederation systems it could be heading for. And one other. Hesperi-LN. The Tyrathca planet.