Their car turned off the street and dipped down into an underground garage. The building it served was a ten-storey block with small shops at street level (half of them empty), and the upper floors given over to offices and design bureaus.
“Going to tell us why we’re here now?” Dahybi asked as they climbed out of the car.
“Simple,” Joshua said. “When you need a job doing fast and effectively, go to a professional.”
The office of Kilmartin and Elgant, Data Security Specialists, was on the seventh floor. There was nobody behind the desk in the reception room. Joshua paused for a second, expecting a secretarial program to query them, but the desktop processor wasn’t switched on. The inner door slid open when he approached it.
In a rash of optimistic bravado accompanying their firm’s launch, Kilmartin and Elgant had taken a fifty-year lease on sufficient floor space to house fifteen operatives. There were still enough desks for fifteen in the open-plan office; seven of them had dust covers thrown over processors which were fairly dubious even by Nyvan’s technological standards; four desks had niches where processors used to be; one patch of carpet showed imprints where a desk used to stand.
Only one desk had a decent cluster of modern blocks, which shared the surface with a thoroughly dead potted plant. Two men were sitting behind it, staring intently into the hazy aura of an AV pillar. The first was tall, young, and broad-shouldered, sporting a long blond ponytail tied with a colourful leather lace. He wore an expensive black suit, tailored to provide maximum freedom of movement. He was not openly belligerent, but had a presence that would make people think twice before tackling him. The second was well into middle age, dressed in a faded grey-brown jacket, tufty chestnut hair askew. He looked as if he belonged behind the complaints desk in a tax office.
They regarded Joshua and his odd delegation with mild surprise.
Joshua looked from one to the other, slightly uncertain as intuition tickled his skull. Then he clicked his fingers decisively and pointed at the younger of the two. “I bet you’re the data expert and your friend handles the combat routines. Good disguise, right?”
The aura from the AV pillar faded as the younger man tilted his chair back and put his hands behind his head. “Clever. Are we expecting you, Mr . . . ?”
Joshua gave a faint smile. “You tell me.”
“All right, Captain Calvert, what do you want?”
“I need to access some information, and fast. Can you manage that for me?”
“Sure. Nationwide net access, no problem, whatever file you want. Hey listen, I know what this place looks like. Forget that. Talent isn’t something you can eyeball. And I’m so far on top of things I’m getting oxygen starvation. Someone’s search program locates my public file, I know about it before they do. You came down from the Lady Macbeth an hour ago. One of your crew is still with your spaceplane. Want to know how much the service company is ripping you off for your electron matrix recharge? You’re in the right place.”
“I don’t care. Money doesn’t concern me.”
“Okay, I think we’ve reached interface here.” He turned to his colleague and muttered something. The older man gave him a disgruntled look, then shrugged. He walked out of the office, giving the two serjeants a curious glance as he passed.
“Richard Keaton.” The athletic young man leaned over the desk, holding his hand out and smiling broadly. “Call me Dick.”
“I certainly will.” They shook hands.
“Sorry about Matty, there. He’s got enough implants to chop up a squad of marines. But he gets overprotective, and I don’t need him hovering right now. Smart of you to see which of us was which. I don’t think anyone’s ever done that before.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.”
“So what can I do for you, Captain Calvert?”
“I need to find someone.”
Keaton raised a forefinger. “If I could just interrupt. First, there is my fee.”
“I’m not going to quibble. I might even pay a bonus.”
One of the serjeants tapped a foot pointedly on the worn carpet.
“Nice to hear, Captain. Okay then; my fee is one flight off this planet on the Lady Macbeth , just as soon as you leave. Destination: who cares.”
“That’s an . . . unusual fee. Any particular reason?”
“Like I said, Captain, you came to the right place. This might not be the biggest firm in town, but I fish the data streams. There are possessed on Nyvan. They’ve already taken over Jesup, that wasn’t just propaganda by our upstanding government. The electronic warfare barrage in orbit? That was cover to help them get down here. There aren’t too many in Tonala yet—not according to the Special Investigation Bureau, anyway. But they’re spreading through the other countries.”
“So you want to be gone?”
“I sure do. And I figure you won’t be here when they reach Harrisburg, either. Look, I won’t be any trouble on board. Hell, shove me into zero-tau, I don’t mind.”
Joshua didn’t have the time to argue. Besides, taking Keaton with them actually reduced the risk of exposure. A flight off Nyvan wasn’t such a high price. “You bring only what you’ve got with you; I’m not waiting while you go home to pack. We don’t have any slack built into our mission profile.”
“We have a deal, Captain.”
“Very well, welcome aboard, Dick. Now, the person I want is called Dr Alkad Mzu, alias Daphine Kigano. She arrived on the starship Tekas last night with three companions. I don’t know where she is or who she might attempt to contact; however, she will be trying to stay hidden.” He datavised over a visual file. “Find her.”
Twenty thousand kilometres above Nyvan, the Organization frigate Urschel emerged from its ZTT jump. It was swiftly followed by the Raimo and the Pinzola. They were nowhere near a designated emergence zone, but only the four voidhawks were aware of their arrival. None of Nyvan’s gravitonic-distortion detector satellites were functioning; the waves of electronic warfare assaults had crashed them beyond repair.
After five minutes assessing the local situation, their fusion drives came on, pushing them towards a low-orbit injection point. Once they were on their way, Oscar Kearn, the small flotilla’s commander, concentrated on the eternal, beseeching voices crying into his head.
Where is Mzu? he asked them.
The possessed among the crew, including Cherri Barnes, joined his silky cajoling, adding to the tricksy promises he made. Theirs was a multiple chant which hummed through the beyond, a harmonic passed between every desperate soul. It agitated them, its very existence a taunt; plots and scheming were an exquisitely tortuous reminder of what lay on the other side of their dreadful continuum, what they could partake of once again if they just helped.
Where is Mzu?
What is she doing?
Who is with her?
There are bodies waiting for worthy hosts. Millions of bodies, out here among the light and air and experience , held ready for Capone’s friends. One could be yours. If—
Where is Mzu? Exactly?
Ah.
When they reached a five hundred kilometre orbit, each of the frigates dispatched a spaceplane. The three black delta-shapes sliced down through Nyvan’s atmosphere, their tapering noses lining up on Tonala, hidden behind the planet’s curvature seven thousand kilometres ahead.
Oscar Kearn ordered the frigates to manoeuvre again, and they began to raise their orbit.
“This really doesn’t look good,” Sarha said. “The sensors are showing three of them. I don’t think their transponders are responding to the station.”
“You don’t think?” Beaulieu queried.
“Who knows? Those bloody SD platforms are still at it. I doubt we could pick up an em pulse through all this jamming.”
“What are their drive exhausts like?” Liol asked.
Sarha ignored the datavised displays inside her skull long enough to fire a disgusted glance at him. The three of them were alone on Lady Mac ’s bridge. All the remaining serjeants were down in B capsule, guarding the airlock tube. “What?” There were times when he was a little bit too much like Joshua, that is: quite infuriating.