“Huh?” Lodi cancelled the datavised displays, blinking away the afterimage the graphics left in his mind.
“Capone’s people are in orbit,” Omain said. “They know Mzu is here. They are asking for her.”
“You mean you can tell what’s going on in orbit? Mary! I can’t, not with all the interference from the SD platforms.”
“Not tell, exactly. This is whispered gossip, distorted by the many souls it has passed through. I have only the vaguest notion of the facts.”
Lodi was fascinated. Once he began talking, Omain knew some seriously interesting facts. He’d lived on Garissa, and was quite willing to share his impressions. (Lodi had never summoned the courage to ask Mzu what their old world was like.) From Omain’s melancholic descriptions it sounded like a good place to live. The Garissans, Lodi was sure, had lost more than their world by the sound of it; their whole culture was different now, too tight-arsed and Western-ethnic orientated.
One of the processor blocks datavised a warning into Lodi’s neural nanonics. “Oh, bollocks!”
“What is it?”
They had to speak in raised voices, almost shouting at each other. Omain was sitting in the corner of the living room furthest from Lodi, it was the only way the blocks would remain functional.
“Someone has accessed the hotel’s central processor. They’ve loaded a search program for the three of us, and it’s got a visual reference for Mzu, too.”
“It cannot be the possessed, surely?” Omain said. “Neural nanonics don’t function for us.”
“Might be the Organization ships. No. They’d never be able to access Tonala’s net from orbit, not with the platforms still going at it. Hang on, I’ll see what I can find out.” He felt almost happy as he started retrieving tracker programs from the memory fleks he’d brought. The net dons in this city probably had ten times the experience he’d got from snooping around Ayacucho’s communications circuits, but his programs were still able to flash back through the junctions, tracing the origin of the searchers.
The answer sprang into his mind just as the hotel’s central processor crashed. “Wow, that was some guardian program. But I got them. You know anything about a local firm called Kilmartin and Elgant?”
“No. But I haven’t been here long, not in this incarnation.”
“Right.” Lodi twitched a smile. “I’ll see what . . . that’s odd.”
Omain had risen from his chair. He was frowning at the suite’s double door. “What is?”
“The suite’s net processor is down.”
The door chimed.
“Did you . . .” Lodi began.
Something very heavy smashed into the door. Its panels bulged inwards. Splintering sounds were spitting out of the frame.
“Run!” Omain shouted. He stood before the door, both arms held towards it, palms outwards. His face was clenched with effort. The air twisted frantically in front of him, whipping up a small gale.
Another blow hammered the door, and Omain was sent staggering backwards. Lodi turned to run for the bedroom. He was just in time to see a fat three-metre-long serpent slither vertically up the outside of the window. Its huge head reared back, levelling out to stare straight at him. The jaws parted to display fangs as big as fingers. Then it lunged forwards, shattering the glass.
From his elevated position in the command post, Shemilt studied the ops table below him. One of the girls leaned over and pushed a red-flagged marker closer to the deserted asteroid.
“In range, sir,” she reported.
Shemilt nodded, trying not to show too much dismay. All three of the inter-orbit ships were in range of New Georgia’s SD network now. And Quinn had not returned to change his orders. His very specific orders.
If only we weren’t so bloody terrified of him, Shemilt thought. He still felt sick every time he remembered the zero-tau pod containing Captain Gurtan Mauer. Quinn had opened it up during two of the black mass ceremonies.
If we all grouped together—But of course, death was no longer the end. Throwing the dark messiah into the beyond would solve nothing.
There was a single red telephone in his command post. He picked up the handset. “Fire,” he ordered.
Two of the three inter-orbit ships on their way to find out what the teams from Jesup were doing in the deserted asteroids were struck by X-ray lasers. The beams shone clean through the life support capsules and the fusion drive casings. Both crews died instantly. Electronics flash evaporated. Drive systems ruptured. Two wrecks tumbled through space, their hulls glowing a dull orange, vapour squirting from split tanks.
The third was targeted by a pair of combat wasps.
The officers of the other two national SD networks saw them streaking away from New Georgia’s platform, heading towards the helpless inter-orbit ship. They requested and received fire authority codes. By then the attacking combat wasps had begun dispensing their submunitions drones. Infrared decoys shone like micro-novas amid the shoal of drive exhausts; electronic warfare pulses screamed at the sensors of any SD platform within five thousand kilometres. The offensive was a valid tactic; combat wasps launched to try to protect the remaining ship were confused for several seconds. A time period which in space warfare was critical.
A flock of one-shot pulsers finally got close enough to discharge into the remaining inter-orbit ship, killing it immediately. That didn’t prevent the kinetic missiles from arrowing in on it at thirty-five gees. Nor submunitions with nuclear warheads from detonating when they were within range.
Lady Mac ’s sensors picked up most of the brief battle, though the overspill from the electronic warfare submunitions overlapping the general assault waged by the SD platforms caused several overload dropouts.
“This is becoming a seriously hazardous location,” Sarha mumbled. The external sensor image was quivering badly as if something was shaking the starship about. Artificial circles of green, blue, and yellow were splashing open against the starfield like raindrop graffiti. Intense blue-white flares started to appear among them.
“It just went nuclear,” Beaulieu said. “I don’t think I’ve seen overkill on that scale before.”
“What the hell is going on up there?” Sarha asked.
“Nothing good,” Liol said. “A possessed would have to be very determined to make a trip to one of those abandoned asteroids; there are no biospheres left, that’ll leave them heavily dependent on technology.”
“How are the Organization ships reacting?” Sarha asked. Twenty minutes after Lady Mac had left the Spirit of Freedom , the three frigates had docked. Quarter of an hour after that all communication with the station had ceased. They were now holding orbit eight hundred kilometres ahead of Spirit of Freedom , which gave their sensors a reasonable resolution.
“I’m way ahead of you,” Liol said. “Two of them are launching—wait, they all are. They’re going down into a lower orbit. Damn, I wish we could see what the voidhawks are doing.”
“I’m registering activity within the station’s defence sensor suite,” Beaulieu said. “They’re sweeping us.”
“Liol, take us another five hundred kilometres away.”
“No problem.”
Sarha consulted the orbital display. “We’ll be over Tonala in another thirty minutes. I’m going to recommend Joshua pulls out.”
“There’s a lot of ship movements beginning down here,” Beaulieu said. “Two more low-orbit stations are launching ships; and those are the ones we can see.”
“Bugger it,” Sarha grunted. “Okay, go to defence-ready status.”
Lady Mac ’s standard sensor clusters retreated down into their recesses; the smaller, bulbous combat sensors slid smoothly upwards to replace them, gold-chrome lenses reflecting the last twinkling explosions in high orbit. Her combat wasp launch tubes opened.
All around her, Nyvan’s national navies and SD platforms were switching to the same status.
Since arriving at Jesup, Dwyer had spent almost every hour helping to modify the bridge systems of the cargo clipper Mount’s Delta . Given his minimal technical background, his time was spent supervising the non-possessed technicians who did most of the installation.
The bridge compartment was badly cramped, which meant only a couple of people could work in it at any one time. Dwyer had become highly proficient at dodging flying circuit boards and loose console covers. But he was satisfied with the result, which was far less crude than the changes they’d made to the Tantu . With the huge stock of component spares available in the spaceport, the consoles looked as if they’d slipped off the factory production line mere hours earlier. Their processors were now all military grade, capable of functioning while they were subjected to the energistic effect of the possessed. And the flight computer had been augmented until it was capable of flying the ship following the simplest of verbal orders.
This time there was none of the black sculpture effect, every surface was standard. Quinn had insisted the clipper’s life support capsule must stand up to inspection when they arrived at Earth. Dwyer was confident he had reached that objective.