She glanced down contemptuously. “Not a chance. This place is really filling up now. My audio discrimination programs can’t filter over that distance.”
“Come down please, Monica.”
Something in his tone halted any protest. She slithered down the pitted yellow-painted titanium bodywork of the mining machine.
“We have to decide what to do. Now.”
She flinched. “Oh, God.”
“Do you believe Adok Dala will know where Voi is?”
“I don’t think so, but there’s no guarantee. And if we snatch Dala now, it isn’t going to make a whole lot of difference as far as official repercussions are concerned. He’s hardly going to complain about being taken off Ayacucho, is he?”
“You’re right. And it will prevent Calvert from learning anything.”
Joshua’s neural nanonics reported a call from Dahybi. “Two voidhawks from the defence delegation have just left the docking ledge, Captain. Our sensors can’t see much from inside the bay, but we think they’re keeping station five kilometres off the spaceport.”
“Okay, keep monitoring them.”
“No problem. But you should know that Ayacucho is suffering localized power failures. They’re completely random, and the supervisor programs can’t locate any physical problem in the supply system. One of the news studios has gone off-line, as well.”
“Jesus. Start flight prepping
“Aye, Captain. Oh, and Liol has arrived. He’s not possessed.”
“Wonderful.”
Kole was still clinging magnetically to his side. No one she’d introduced him to had mentioned Voi. His original idea had been to ask them about Ikela’s murder and see what was said. But now time was running out. He looked around to find out where the serjeants were, hoping Ione wasn’t going to make an issue of pulling out. Hell, we gave it our best.
The compere was striding out on the stage, holding her arms out for silence as the rowdy crowd cheered and started catcalling. She started into her spiel about the Fuckmasters.
“This is Shea,” Kole told him.
It was hard for Joshua to smile; Shea was tall and skinny, almost identical to Voi’s size and height. He datavised his electronic warfare block to scan her, but she was clean. What he saw was real, not a chameleon suit. It wasn’t Voi.
“This is Joshua Calvert,” Kole boasted, raising her voice against the rising whistle of the giant AV projectors. “He’s my starship captain.”
Shea’s melancholia became outright distress. She started crying.
Kole gave her an astonished look. “What’s the matter?”
Shea shook her head, lips sealed together.
“I’m sorry,” Joshua said, earnestly sympathetic. “What did I do?”
Shea smiled bravely. “It’s not you. It’s just . . . my boyfriend left this afternoon. He’s captaining a starship, too, and that reminded me. I don’t know when I’m going to see him again. He wouldn’t say.”
Intuition was starting a major-league riot in Joshua’s skull. The first MF band was strolling onstage. He put a protective arm around Shea’s shoulders, ignoring Kole’s flash of ire. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink. You can tell me about it. You never know, I might be able to help. Stranger things happen in space.”
He signalled the two serjeants frantically, and turned away from the stage just as the AV projectors burst into life. A thick haze of coherent light filled the Terminal Terminus. Even though he was looking away, sensations spirited down his nerves; fragmented signals saturated with crude activant sequences. He felt good. He felt hot. He felt randy. He felt slippery.
A glance back over his shoulder had him sitting on a saddle astride a giant penis, urging it forwards.
Honestly, kids today. When he was younger MF was about the giddy pursuit, how it felt when your partner adored you in return, or spurned you without reason. Making up and breaking up. The infinite states of the heart, not the dick.
The kids around him were laughing and giggling, joyous expressions on their incredulous faces as the AV dazzle poured down their irises. They all swayed from side to side in unison.
“Joshua, four Edenists are coming this way,” a serjeant warned.
Joshua could see them in the sparkling light cloud which pervaded the audience. Taller than everyone else, some kind of visor over their eyes, moving intently through the swinging throng.
He grabbed Shea’s hand tightly. “This way,” he hissed urgently, and veered off towards the mock wormhole in the centre of the club. One of the serjeants cleared a path, forcing people aside. Frowns and snarls lined his route.
“Dahybi,” he datavised. “Get the rest of the serjeants out of zero-tau, fast. Secure a route through the spaceport from the axial chamber to
“It’s being done, Captain. Parts of the asteroid’s net are crashing.”
“Jesus. Okay, we’ve got the serjeants’ affinity to keep communications open if it goes completely. You’d better keep one in the bridge with you.”
He reached the writhing black column and looked back. Shea was breathless and confused, but not protesting. The Edenists weren’t chasing after him. “What . . . ?” Some sort of struggle had broken out over where he’d left Kole’s friends. Two of the tall agents were pulling an inert body between them. It was Adok Dala, unconscious and shaking, victim of a nervejam shot. The other pair of agents and someone else were holding back some irate kids. A nervejam stick was raised and fired.
Joshua turned his head a little too far, and he was tasting nipple while he slid over dark pigmentation as if he were snowboard slaloming, leaving a huge trail of glistening saliva behind him. His neck muscles flicked back a couple of degrees, and the Edenists were retreating, completely unnoticed by the entranced euphoric audience they were shoving their way through. Behind them, Kole’s friends clung together; those still standing wept uncomprehendingly over those felled by the violence which had stabbed so unexpectedly into their moment of erotic rapture.
Shea gasped at the scene and made to rush over.
“No,” Joshua shouted. He pulled her back, and she recoiled, as frightened by him as the agents. “Listen to me, we have to get out of here. It’s only going to get worse.”
“Is it the possessed?”
“Yeah. Now come on.”
Still keeping hold of her hand he slid around the wormhole. It felt like dry rubber against his side, flexing in queasy movements.
“Nearest exit,” he told the serjeant in front of him. “Go.” It began to plough through tightly packed bodies at an alarming speed. Blissfully unaware people were sent tumbling. Joshua followed on grimly. The Edenists must have wanted Adok Dala for the same reason he wanted Shea. Had he got the wrong friend? Oh, hell.
The cavern wall was only ten metres ahead of him now, a red circle shining above an exit. His electronic warfare block datavised an alarm.
Jesus!
“I know,” the lead serjeant shouted. It drew its machine gun.
“No,” he cried. “You can’t, not in here.”
“I’m not inhuman, Joshua,” the burly figure retorted.
They reached the wall and hurried along to the exit. That was when he realized Kole was still with them.
“Stay here,” he told her. “You’ll be safe with all these people.”
“You can’t leave me here,” she gasped imploringly. “Joshua! I know what’s happening. You can’t. I don’t want that to happen to me. You can’t let them. Take me with you, for Mary’s sake!”
And she was just a stricken young girl whose broken hair was flapping wildly.
The first serjeant slammed the door open and went through. “I’ll stay here,” the second said. The machine
