Neutronium Alchemist - Conflict

“Jesus, I can’t believe that’s all there is: life and purgatory. After tens of thousands of years, the universe finally reveals that we have souls, and then we have the glory snatched right back and replaced with terror. There has to be something more, there has to be. He wouldn’t do that to us.”

“Who?”

“God, he, she, it, whatever. This torment, it’s too . . . I don’t know. Personal. Why the fuck build a universe that does this to people? If you’re that powerful, why not make death final, or make everyone immortal? Why this ? We have to know, have to find out why it works the way it does. That way we can know what the answer to all this is. We have to find something that’s permanent, something which will last until the end of time.”

“How do you propose to do that?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” he snapped, then just as suddenly he was thoughtful again. “Maybe the Kiint. They say they’ve solved all this. They won’t tell us outright, but they might at least point me in the right direction.”

Sarha looked down at his intense expression in astonishment. Joshua taking life so seriously was strange, Joshua mounting a crusade was frankly astonishing. For one second she thought that he had been possessed after all. “You?” she blurted.

All the suffering and angst vanished from his angular face. The old Joshua swept back. He started chuckling. “Yeah, me. I might be catching religion a little late in life, but the born-again are always the most insufferable and devout.”

“It’s more than your hand which needs checking out in the sick bay.”

“Thank you, my loyal crew.” His restraint webbing parted, allowing him up. “But we’re still going to ask the Kiint.” He ordered the flight computer to run a full star track search and correlate their exact position. Then he ran an almanac search for Jobis’s file.

“Right now?” Dahybi asked tartly. “You’re going to throw away all you achieved on Ayacucho just like that?”

“Of course not,” Joshua said smoothly.

“Good. Because if we don’t find Mzu and the Alchemist before the possessed do, there probably won’t be any Confederation left for you to save.”

Adok Dala returned to consciousness with a loud cry. He looked around fearfully at the Hoya ’s sick bay. Not reassured by his surroundings. Not at all.

Samuel removed the medical nanonic package from the base of his neck. “Easy there. You’re quite safe, Adok. Nobody is going to hurt you here. And I must apologize for the way we treated you in the club, but you are rather important to us.”

“You’re not the possessed?”

“No. We’re Edenists. Well, apart from Monica, here; she’s from the Kulu Kingdom.”

Monica did her best to smile at the nervous boy.

“You’re foreign agents, then?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t tell you anything. I’m not helping you catch Mzu.”

“That’s very patriotic. But we’re not interested in Mzu. Frankly, we hope she got away clean. You see, the possessed are in charge of Ayacucho now.”

Adok moaned in distress, clamping his hand over his mouth.

“What we’d like to know about is Voi,” Samuel said.

“Voi?”

“Yes. Do you know where she is?”

“I haven’t seen her for days. She put us all on standby. It was silly, we had to organize the kids in the day clubs to kill spiders. She said Lodi figured out you were using them to spy on us.”

“Clever man, Lodi. Do you know where he is?”

“No. Not for a couple of days.”

“Interesting. How many are there in this group of yours?”

“About twenty, twenty-five. There’s no real list. We’re just friends.”

“Who started it?”

“Voi. She’d changed when she came out of detox. The genocide became a real cause for her. We just got sucked along by her. Everybody does when Voi gets serious about an issue.”

Monica datavised a request to her processor block, retrieving a memory image from the file she’d recorded at the Terminal Terminus. It had bothered her since the snatch. The last glimpse she had of Joshua Calvert showed him tugging a girl along. She showed the enhanced image to Adok. “Do you know her?”

He blinked blearily at the little screen. Whatever drugs Samuel had administered to loosen his tongue were making him drowsy. “That’s Shea. I like her, but . . .”

“Is she one of your group?”

“Not really, but she’s Prince Lambert’s girlfriend. He’s sort of a member; and she’s done a few things for us occasionally.”

Monica looked at Samuel. “What have we got on this Prince Lambert character?”

“A moment.” He consulted his bitek processor block. “He’s registered as a pilot for the Tekas , an executive yacht owned by his family corporation. Monica, it was one of the starships which left Ayacucho this afternoon.”

“Damn it!” She slammed her fist down on one of the cabinets beside Adok Dala’s couch. “Does Voi know Prince Lambert?”

Adok smiled blithely. “Yes. They used to be lovers. He was the reason she wound up in detox.”

Do you have a jump coordinate for the Tekas? samuel asked Niveu.

No. It flew outside our mass perception range. None of the voidhawks registered its jump. But we do have the flight vector. It was an odd course, the ship was heading back down to the disk when it passed beyond us. If it didn’t perform any drastic realignment manoeuvres there are three possible stars it could have flown to: Shikoku, Nyvan, and Torrox.

Thank you. We’ll check them.

Of course. I’ll inform Duida’s defence command. We’ll leave immediately.

Shea had changed into a grey ship-suit when Joshua floated into the sickbay. She was talking quietly to Liol, but broke off to give him a shy grin. Ashly and Melvyn were busy packing equipment away. One of the serjeants held on to a grab hoop just inside the hatch.

“How are you feeling?” Joshua asked her.

“Fine. Ashly gave me a tranquillizer. I think it helps.”

“I wish he’d give me one.”

Her grin brightened. “Is your hand very bad?”

He held it up. “Most of the bone is intact, but I’m going to need some clone vat tissue to build the fingers up. The package can’t regenerate quite that much.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Tranquillity will pay for it,” he said, straight-faced. “Where’s Kole?”

“Zero-tau,” Melvyn said.

“Good idea.”

“Do you want me to go in as well?” Shea asked.

“Up to you. But I need some help before you decide.”

“From me?”

“Yes. Let me explain. Contrary to everything the news studios were saying, I’m not a foreign agent.”

“I know that, you’re Lagrange Calvert.”

Joshua smiled. “I knew it would come in useful one day. The thing is, we are looking for Alkad Mzu, but not because of any Omutan propaganda.”

“Why then?”