There was a last ironic laugh, and his tormenter was gone.
For all his power and strength, there was nothing Quinn could do. Absolutely nothing. His impotence was an agonizing humiliation. He screamed, and the altar shattered, sending the priest’s battered body tumbling. The acolytes began to run. Quinn kicked Twelve-T’s brain, and the grisly organ burst apart, sending a splat of gore across his terrified disciples. He turned back and discharged a bolt of searing white fire into the priest’s remnants. The body ignited instantly, but the flames were only an effete mockery of the incendiary heat which had consumed Lawrence.
The disciples shrank away as Quinn sent blast after blast of white fire into the pyre, reducing the body and the crumbling stones to radiant magma. When they reached the boundary of light given off from the bonfires, they too turned and fled after the acolytes.
Only the ghosts remained, safe from the fury of the black-robed figure in their secluded lifeless realm. After a while they saw him sink to his knees and make the sign of the inverted cross on his chest.
“I will not fail you, my Lord,” he said quietly. “I will quicken the Night as I promised. All I ask as the price of my soul is that when it has fallen you bring me the fucker who did this.”
He rose and made his way out of the park. This time he was truly alone. Even ghosts quailed before the terrifying thoughts alight inside his head.
Hoya was the first of the four voidhawks to emerge above Nyvan. Niveu and his crew immediately began scanning the local environment for threats.
“No ships within twenty thousand kilometres,” he said, “but the SD networks are shooting off electronic warfare blitzes at each other. Looks like the nations are in their usual confrontational state.”
Monica accessed the sensor suite in the voidhawk’s lower hull, and the starfield projected into her mind came alive with vivid coloured icons. Two more voidhawks were holding formation a hundred kilometres away. As she watched, another wormhole terminus opened to disgorge the fourth. “Are we being targeted by the platforms?” she asked. She appreciated the way the Edenists unfailingly spoke out loud in her presence, keeping her informed. But their display symbology was very different to that used by the Royal Navy, she hadn’t quite mastered the program yet.
“There are very few specific targets,” Samuel said. “The networks appear intent on jamming and disrupting every processor out to geosync orbit.”
“Is it safe for us to approach?”
Niveu shrugged. “Yes. For now. We’ll monitor the local news to find out what’s going on. If there’s any indication of them advancing the hostilities to an active stage, I’ll review the situation again.”
“Does your service have any stations down there?” she asked Samuel.
“There are some assets, but we don’t have any active operatives. We don’t even have an embassy. There’s no gas giant in this system, it was colonized long before their presence was deemed necessary to develop an industrialized economy. Frankly, the price of having to import all their He3 is partly responsible for Nyvan’s current state.”
“It also means we have no backup,” Niveu said.
“Okay, let me have a communications circuit. We have a couple of embassies and several consuls. They should be monitoring starship traffic.”
It took a long time to establish contact. After hours subjected to the output from the SD platforms, the national civil communications satellites were now almost completely inoperative. She eventually got around the problem by aligning one of Hoya ’s antennae directly on the cities she wanted, which limited her to those on the half of the planet ahead of the voidhawks.
“Mzu’s here,” she said at last. “I got through to Adrian Redway, our station chief in the Harrisburg embassy. The Tekas arrived yesterday. It docked at Tonala’s principal low orbit station, and four people took a spaceplane down to Harrisburg. Voi was one of them, and so was Daphine Kigano.”
“Excellent,” Samuel said. “Is the Tekas still here?”
“No. It departed an hour later. And no other starship has left since. She’s still down there. We’ve got her.”
“We have to go in,” Samuel told Niveu.
“I understand. But you should know that several governments are claiming New Georgia has fallen to the possessed. New Georgia is denying it of course, though it does seem as though they have lost their asteroid, Jesup. Apparently Jesup dispatched some inter-orbit ships to the three abandoned asteroids. It is being heralded as a breach of sovereignty, which of course is taken extremely seriously here.”
“Could the ships be carrying escapees?” Monica asked.
“It is possible, I suppose. Although I can’t think of any reason why anyone should consider those asteroids to be a refuge; they were badly damaged in the ’32 conflict. No one even bothered to salvage them. But we ought to know what the Jesup ships are doing before too long; the governments which own the abandoned asteroids have dispatched their own ships to investigate.”
“If it turns out those ships from Jesup are crewed by possessed, then the situation will deteriorate rapidly,” Samuel said. “The other governments are unlikely to come to New Georgia’s aid.”
“True enough,” Monica said pensively. “They’re more likely to nuke the whole country.”
“I don’t imagine we will be staying long,” Samuel said. “And we will have the flyers with us, we can evacuate within minutes.”
“Yeah sure. There’s one other thing.”
“Oh?”
“Redway said one other starship has arrived since the Tekas left. The Lady Macbeth , she’s docked at Tonala’s main low-orbit station.”
“How intriguing. The Lord of Ruin obviously knew what she was doing when she chose this Lagrange Calvert.”
Monica was sure there was a note of admiration in his voice.
The four voidhawks accelerated in towards Nyvan. After receiving permission from traffic control, they slotted into a six-hundred-kilometre orbit, adopting a diamond formation. Four ion field flyers left their hangars and curved down towards the planet, heading into the huge swirl of angry cloud that covered most of Tonala.
Jesup’s Strategic Defence control centre had been hollowed out of the rock deep behind the habitation section. It was New Georgia’s ultimate citadel: safe from any external attack which didn’t actually crack Jesup open, equipped with enough security systems to fend off an open mutiny by the asteroid’s population, and fitted with a completely independent environmental circuit. No matter what happened to Jesup and New Georgia’s government, the SD officers could continue to fight on for weeks.
Quinn waited for the monolithic innermost door to slide open, displaying a serenity that was harrowing in its depth. Only Bonham accompanied him now as he strode around the asteroid, the other disciples were too afraid.
There had been a few modifications to the control centre. Console technology had devolved considerably; in most cases processors and AV projectors had abated to a simple telephone. A whole rank of the black and silver machines were lined up along a wall, where they were jangling incessantly. A group of officers in stiff grey uniforms were snatching up the handsets as fast as they could. In front of them was a big square table with a picture of Nyvan and its orbiting asteroids covering its surface. Five young women were busy moving wooden markers across it with long poles.
The adrenaline-powered clamour faltered as Quinn walked in. There was no sign of any face inside his robe’s hood; light fell into the oval opening never to return. Only the pearl-white hands emerging from his sleeves suggested a human was in residence.
“Keep going,” he told them.
The voices sprang back, far louder than before so as to demonstrate their loyalty and commitment.
Quinn went over to the commander’s post, a pulpitlike podium which overlooked the table. “What is the problem?”
Shemilt, who was running the control centre, saluted sharply. He was wearing a heavily decorated Luftwaffe uniform from the Second World War, every inch the Teutonic warrior aristocrat. “I regret to inform you, sir, that ships have been sent to intercept our teams working in the other asteroids. The first will make contact in forty minutes.”
Quinn studied the table; it was becoming cluttered. Four vultures were grouped together just above the planet. New Georgia’s SD platforms were diamond-studded pyramids. Ruby pentagons showed opposing platforms. Three red-flagged markers were being shoved slowly over the starmap. “Are they warships?”
“Our observation stations are having a lot of trouble in this foul weather, but we don’t think so. Not frigates, anyway. I expect they will be carrying troops, though; they’re definitely big enough for that.”
“Don’t get too carried away, Shemilt.”
Shemilt stood to attention. “Yes, sir. ”
Quinn pointed at one of the red flags. “Can our SD platforms hit these ships?”
“Yes, sir.” Shemilt pulled a clipboard off a hook inside his command post and flicked through the typewritten sheets. “Two of them are in range of our X-ray lasers, and the third can be destroyed with combat wasps.”
“Good. Kill the little shits.”
“Yes, sir.” Shemilt hesitated. “If we do that, the other networks will probably shoot at us.”