“No.”
“Do you export as much as Earth?”
“No.”
Jezzibella inclined her head contemptuously on one side, pushing her lips out towards Al. “Anything else you want to know?”
Her voice had suddenly become the same as a schoolteacher’s. Al started to laugh in sincere admiration. “Goddamn! Modern women.”
“Can you all do that heat trick with the fingers?”
“Sure can, honey.”
“Interesting. So how is taking over this spaceport tied in with conquering the planet?”
Al’s first instinct was to brag. About the synchronized flights up to the orbiting asteroids. About taking out the SD personnel. About using the SD network firepower to open up the whole planet to his Organization. But they were short on time. And this was no backwoods girl, she’d understand if he explained it. “Sorry, babe, but we’re kinda in a hurry. It’s been a ball.”
“No it hasn’t. If you’d had a ball with me, you’d know about it.”
“Hot shit—”
“If it’s tied in with spaceplane flights, you’re either going up to starships or the orbiting asteroids. But if you’re taking over the planet, it can’t be the starships. So it has to be the asteroids. Let me guess, the Strategic Defence network.” She watched the alarmed expressions light up on the faces of the gangsters. All except Mayor Harwood, but then he was already hopelessly adrift in some deep private purgatory. “How did I do?”
Al could only gawp. He’d heard of lady spiders like this; they knitted fancy webs or did hypnosis, or something. It ended up that the males just couldn’t escape. Then they got screwed and eaten.
Now I know what they go through.
“You did pretty good.” He was envious of her cool. Envious of a lot of things, actually.
“Al?” Emmet Mordden urged. “Al, we have to get going.”
“Yeah, yeah. I ain’t forgotten.”
“We can send this group down to Luciano’s people for possessing.”
“Hey, who the fuck’s in charge here?”
Emmet took a frightened pace backwards.
“In charge, but not in control,” Jezzibella teased.
“Don’t push it, lady,” Al warned her sharply.
“True leaders simply tell people to do what they want to do anyway.” She licked her lips. “Guess what I want to do?”
“Fuck this. Modern women. You’re all like goddamn whores. I ain’t never heard anything like it.”
“The talk isn’t all you’ve never had before.”
“Holy Christ.”
“So what do you say, Al?” Jezzibella switched her voice back to a liquid rumble. She almost didn’t have to fake it. She was so turned on, excited, stimulated. You name it. Caught up in a terrorist hijack. And such strange terrorists, too. Wimps with a personal nuclear capability. Except the leader, he was massively focused. Not bad-looking, either. “Want me to tag along on your little coup d’état mission? Or are you going to spend the rest of every waking day wondering what it would have been like? And you will wonder. You know you will.”
“We got a spare seat on the rocketship,” Al said. “But you’ve got to do as you’re told.”
She batted her eyelashes. “That’ll be a first.”
Amazed at what he’d just said, Al tried to play back their conversation in his mind to see how he’d gotten to this point. No good, he couldn’t figure it. He was acting on pure impulse again. And that felt first-class. Like the good old days. People never did know what he was going to do next. It kept them on edge, and him on top.
Jezzibella walked over to him and tucked her arm in his. “Let’s go.”
Al grinned around wolfishly. “Okay, wiseasses, you heard the lady. Mickey, take the rest of this bunch down to Luciano. Emmet, Silvano, take your boys to their spaceplanes.”
“Leave me my manager, and the old woman, oh, and the band too,” Jezzibella said.
“What the hell is this?” Al demanded. “I ain’t got room in my Organization for freeloaders.”
“You want me to look good. I need them.”
“Je-zus, you’re pushy.”
“You want a girl who’s a pushover, find yourself a teenage bimbo. Me, it’s the whole package or nothing.”
“Okay, Mickey, lay off the cornholers. But the rest of them get the full treatment.” He shoved his hands out towards her, palms held up imploringly. “Good enough?” The sarcasm wasn’t entirely feigned.
“Good enough,” Jezzibella agreed.
They grinned knowingly at each other for a moment, then led the procession of gangsters down the concourse to the waiting spaceplanes.
The wormhole terminus opened smoothly six hundred and eighty thousand kilometres above Jupiter’s equator, the absolute minimum permitted distance from the prodigious band of orbiting habitats. Oenone flew out of the circular gap, and immediately identified itself to the Jovian Strategic Defence network. As soon as their approach authorization had been granted, the voidhawk accelerated in towards the Kristata habitat at an urgent five gees. It was already asking the habitat to assemble a medical team to meet it as soon as it docked.
Of what nature?kristata asked.
At which point Cacus, their medical officer, took over, using the voidhawk’s affinity to relay a list of the grisly physical injuries inflicted on Syrinx by the possessed occupying Pernik island. But most importantly we’re going to need a psychological trauma team,he said. We put her in zero-tau for the flight, naturally. However, she did not respond to any level of mental communication after she was brought on board, other than a purely autonomic acknowledgement of Oenone ’s contact. I’m afraid the intensity of the withdrawal is one which approaches catatonia.
What happened to her?queried the habitat. it was unusual for a voidhawk to fly without its captain’s guidance.
She was tortured.
Ruben waited until the medical discussion was under way before asking Oenone for an affinity link with Eden itself. Arriving at Jupiter he could actually feel his body relaxing in the bridge couch despite the acceleration pressure. The events which would play out over the next few hours were going to be strenuous, but nothing like as bad as Atlantis and the voyage to the Sol system.
Oenone ’s instinct had been to rush directly to Saturn and the Romulus habitat as soon as Oxley had brought Syrinx on board. The yearning to go home after such a tremendous shock was as much a voidhawk trait as a human one.
It had been down to Ruben to convince the frantic, frightened voidhawk that Jupiter would be preferable. Jovian habitats had more advanced medical facilities than those orbiting Saturn. And, of course, there was the Consensus to inform.