“Time is something which is giving me a fucking headache, Emmet. And I ain’t talking about Wells’s machine here. I need to get the fleet back into action, soonest.”
“But, Al—” he stopped as Al held up a hand.
“I know. We can’t launch no invasion right now. Not enough antimatter. There’s gotta be something else they can do. I’m being honest with you here, Emmet, the boys are so antsy, they’ll mutiny if we keep them kicking their heels in port much longer.”
“I suppose you could launch some fast strike raids. Let people know we’ve still got some punch.”
“Strike on what? Just blowing things up for the sake of it, ain’t my style. We have to give the fleet a purpose.”
“There’s the Mortonridge Liberation. The Confederation’s been beaming propaganda about that to every city on New California, telling us how we’re bound to lose eventually. If we hit some of their supply convoys we’d be helping the possessed on Ombey.”
“Yeah,” Al said. The notion didn’t really appeal, too few visible returns. “What I’m looking for is something that’ll cause a shitload of trouble for the Confederation each time. Knocking out a couple of ships ain’t going to do that.”
“Well . . . This is just an idea, Al. I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing you’re looking for. It depends on how many planets you want to rule over.”
“The Organization has to keep up its momentum to exist. Ruling planets is only a part of that. So talk to me, Emmet.”
Kiera could see eight hellhawks out on the ledge below her. They were all sitting on their pedestals, ingesting nutrient fluid. A rotor had been drawn up so the whole flock could feed on the ten metallic mushrooms which remained functional. Studying the huge creatures, so powerful yet utterly dependent, Kiera couldn’t avoid the religious analogy. They were like a devout congregation coming to receive mass from their priestess. Each of them abased themselves before her, and if the correct obeisance was performed, they received her blessing in return, and were allowed to live.
The Kerachel swept in above the ledge, appearing so swiftly out of the umbra it might have just swallowed in. A pointed lozenge-shape, a hundred metres long, it hardly hesitated as it found its designated pedestal and sank down. Knowing that even though it couldn’t see her expression, it could sense her thoughts, she smiled arrogantly down upon it. “Any problems?” she asked casually.
“Monterey’s command centre monitored its patrol flight,” Hudson Proctor replied. “No deviations. Eight suspect objects destroyed.”
“Well done,” she murmured. A hand waved languid permission to start.
Hudson Proctor picked up a handset, and began speaking into it. Two hundred metres below the departure lounge, her loyal little team opened a valve, and the precious fluid surged along a pipe out to the pedestal. A feeling of contentment strummed the air like background music as Kerachel began sucking in its food. Kiera could feel the hellhawk’s mood, it mellowed her own.
There were eighty-seven hellhawks based at Monterey now. A formidable flotilla by anyone’s standards. Securing them for herself had absorbed all her efforts over the last few days. Now it was time to start thinking ahead again. Her position here was actually a lot stronger than it had been at Valisk. If the habitat was a fiefdom, then New California was a kingdom in comparison. One which Capone appeared singularly inept at maintaining. The main reason she’d established herself so easily in the docking ledges was the apathy spreading through Monterey. Nobody thought to question her.
That simply wouldn’t do. In building his Organization, Capone had grasped an instinctive truth. People, possessed or otherwise, needed structure and order in their lives. It was one of the reasons they fell into line so easily, familiarity was a welcome comrade. Give them the kind of nirvana which existed (though she had strong suspicions about that) in the realm where planets shifted to, and the population would sink into a wretched, lotus-eating state. The Siamese twin of unending indulgent leisure. If she was honest to herself, she was terrified of the immortality she’d been given. Life would change beyond comprehension, and that was going to be very hard indeed. For an adaptation of that magnitude, she would no longer be herself.
And that, I will not permit.
She enjoyed what she was and what she’d got, the drives and needs. Like this, at least she remained recognizably human. That identity was worth preserving. Worth fighting for.
Capone wouldn’t do it. He was weak, controlled by that ingenious trollop Jezzibella, by a non-possessed.
In the Organization, a method of enforcing control over an entire planetary population had been perfected. If she was in charge, it could be used to implement her policies. The possessed would learn to live with their phobia of open skies. In return they would have the normal human existence they craved. There would be no dangerous metamorphosis into an alien state of being. She would remain whole. Herself.
A twitch of motion broke her contemplation. Someone was walking along the docking ledge, someone in a bulky orange and white spacesuit with a globular helmet. Compared to modern SSI suits, the thing was ridiculously old-fashioned. The only reason for wearing one was if you didn’t have neural nanonics.
“Are there any engineering crews on the ledge?” Kiera asked. She couldn’t see any hellhawks receiving maintenance right now.
“A couple,” Hudson Proctor answered. “The Foica is being loaded with combat wasps, and Varrad ’s main fusion generator needs work on its heat dump panels.”
“Oh. Where . . .”
“Kiera.” Hudson held up the handset in trepidation. “Capone’s calling all his senior lieutenants. It’s an invite to some kind of glam party this evening.”
“Really?” She gave the spacesuited figure one last glance. “And I haven’t a thing to wear. But if our Great and Glorious Leader has summoned me, I’d better not disappoint him.”
Back on Koblat, they called these spacesuits ballcrushers. Jed had worn one before for an emergency evacuation drill, and now he was remembering why. Putting it on was easy enough; when they got it out of the locker it was a flaccid sack three times too large for his frame. He’d wriggled into it, standing with arms outstretched and legs apart so the baggy fabric could hang unobstructed off each limb. Then Beth had activated the wristpad control, and the fabric contracted like an all-over tourniquet. Now every part of his body was being squeezed tight. It was the same principle as an SII suit, preventing any loose bubbles of air becoming trapped between his skin and the suit. If a suit contained any sort of gas, it would inflate like a rigid balloon as soon as he stepped out into a vacuum.
This way, he could move about almost unrestricted. Providing he ignored the sharp pincer sensation besetting his crotch at every motion. Not an entirely easy thing to disregard.
But apart from that, the suit was functioning smoothly. He wished his heart would do the same. According to the hazy purple icons projected onto the inside of his helmet, the suit’s integral thermal shunt strips were conducting away a lot of heat. Nerves and an adrenaline high were making the blood pound away in his arteries. His tension wasn’t helped by the rank of huge hellhawks he was walking along. He knew they could sense his thoughts and all the guilt cluttering up his skull, which made the torment even worse. A bad case of feedback. Bubbles of plastic and dark metal clung to the underbellies of the bitek starships like mechanical excrescences. Weapons and sensors. He was sure every one of them was tracking him.
“Jed, you’re getting worse,” Rocio told him.
“How can you tell?”
“Why are you whispering? You are using a legitimate spacesuit radio frequency. If the Organization is monitoring this, which I doubt, they still have to decrypt the signal, which I also doubt their ability to do. As far as they are concerned you are just one of Kiera’s people, while she will think you belong to the Organization. That’s the beauty of this in-fighting, nobody knows what anyone else is doing around here.”
“Sorry,” Jed said contritely into the helmet mike.
“I’m monitoring your body functions, and your heartrate is still climbing.”
That brought a shudder which rippled up from Jed’s legs to make his chest quiver. “Oh Jeeze. I’ll come back.”
“No no, you’re doing fine. Only another three hundred metres to the airlock.”
“But the hellhawks are going to know!”
“Only if you don’t take precautions. I think it’s time we used a little chemical help here.”
“I didn’t bring any. We weren’t supposed to need that in Valisk.”
“I don’t mean your underclass narcotics. The suit medical module will provide what you need.”
Jed hadn’t even known the suit had any medical modules. Following Rocio’s instructions, he tapped out a series of orders on the wristpad. The air in the helmet changed slightly, becoming cooler, and smelling of mint. For such a small suffusion, its effect was swift. The cold massaged its way in through Jed’s muscles, bringing a nearly-orgasmic sigh from his throat. It was a hit stronger than anything he’d ever scored in Koblat. His mind was being methodically purged of fright by this balmy tide of wellbeing. He held up his arms, expecting to see all his anxiety streaming out of his fingertips like liquid light.
“Not bad,” he declared.
“How much did you infuse?” Rocio asked.
The hellhawk’s voice came across as brittle and irritating. “What you said,” Jed retorted in a fashion which demonstrated quite plainly who was occupying the lead role. A couple of the physiology icons were flashing a rather pleasing pink in front of him. Like pretty little flower buds opening, he thought.
“All right, Jed, let’s keep going, shall we?”
“Sure thing, mate.”
He started walking forwards again. Even the twinge in his groin was less of an issue now. That medical suffusion was good shit. The hellhawks had stopped radiating their intimidation. With his mind chilling he started to see them in a different context; grounded on their pedestals, sucking desperately at their drink. Not so much different to himself and the girls. He acquired a more confident stride as he passed the last two.
Rocio’s voice started issuing directions again, guiding him in towards the airlock. Tall spires of machinery ran up the rock cliff at the back of the ledge, sprouting pipes in a crazed dendritic formation. Several small fountains of thin vapour were jetting out horizontally from junctions and micrometeorite punctures; their presence a testament to Monterey’s floundering maintenance programme. Windows were set into the drab, sheered rock; long panoramic rectangles fronting departure lounges and engineering management offices. All but two were dark, reflecting weak outlines of the floodlit hellhawks. The remaining pair revealed nothing but vague shadows moving behind their frosted anti-glare shielding.
Maintenance vehicles, cargo trucks, and crew buses had been left scattered along the base of the cliff. Jed made his way through the maze they formed, thankful of the cover. The airlocks waited for him beyond, unlit tunnels leading into the asteroid. Conduits that would take him directly to the nest of the most feared possessed in the Confederation. His trepidation rose again as he approached them. He stopped on the threshold of a personnel airlock, and used the wristpad again.