The Naked God - Flight

“Been there,” Quinn said urbanely. “Done that. Come back.” His hand descended on Garth’s head as if in anointment. “But you will be of use to me. Your body, anyway.” His needle-sharp talons pierced the skin.

The magus discovered that the pain of losing his hands was merely the overture to a very long and quite excruciating symphony.

Chapter 02

It was designated Bureau Seven, which somewhat inevitably for a government organization was acronymed down to B7. To anyone with Govcentral alpha-rated clearance, it was listed as one of the hundreds of bland committees which made up the management hierarchy of the Govcentral Internal Security Directorate. Officially its function was Policy Integration and Resource Allocation, a vital coordination role. The more senior GISD Bureaus produced their requirements for information and actions, and it was B7’s job to make sure none of the new objectives clashed with current operations before they designated local arcology offices with carrying out the project and assigned funds. If there was any anomaly to be found with B7, it was that such an important and sensitive responsibility did not have a political appointee assigned to run it. Certainly the chiefs of Bureaus 1 through 6 changed with every new administration, reflecting fresh political priorities; and several hundred minor posts among the lower Bureaus were also up for grabs as a loyalty reward to the new President’s retinue. Again, no junior positions were available in B7.

So B7 carried on as it always had, isolated and insular. In fact, just how insular would have come as a great shock to any outsider who investigated the nature of its members—that is, a shock in the brief period left to them before being quietly terminated.

Although the antithesis of democracy themselves, they did take the job of guarding the republic of Earth extremely seriously. Possession was the one threat which actually had the potential not just to overthrow but actually eliminate Govcentral, a prospect which hadn’t arisen for nearly four hundred and fifty years, since the population pressures of the Great Dispersal.

Possession, therefore, was the reason why a full meeting of all sixteen members had been convened for the first time in twelve years. Their sensenviron conference had a standard format, a white infinity-walled room with an oval table in the centre seating their generated representations. There was no seniority among them, each had his or her separate area of responsibility, the majority of which were designated purely on geographical terms, although there were supervisors for GISD’s divisions dealing in military intelligence.

An omnidirectional projection hung over the table, showing a warehouse on Norfolk which was burning with unnatural ferocity. Several museum-piece fire engines were racing towards it, along with men in khaki uniforms.

“It would appear the Kavanagh girl is telling the truth,” said the Central American supervisor.

“I never doubted it,” Western Europe replied.

“She’s certainly not possessed,” said Military Intelligence. “Not now, anyway. But she’d still have those memories if she had been.”

“If she’d been possessed, she would have admitted it,” Western Europe said indolently. “You’re building in complications for us.”

“Do you want a full personality debrief to confirm her authenticity?” Southern Africa asked.

“I don’t think we should,” Western Europe said. He absorbed the mildly polite expressions of surprise the representations around the table were directing at him.

“Care to share with us?” Southern Pacific asked archly.

Western Europe looked at the Military Intelligence supervisor. “I believe we have crossover from the Mount’s Delta ?”

Military Intelligence gave a perfunctory nod. “Yes. We confirmed that the starship was carrying two people when it docked at Supra-Brazil. One of them slaughtered the other in an extravagantly gory fashion right after docking was completed, the body was literally exploded. All that we can tell you about the victim is that he was male. We still don’t know who he was, there’s certainly no correlating DNA profile stored in our memory cores. I’ve requested that all governments we’re in contact with run a search through their records, but I don’t hold out much hope.”

“Why not?” Southern Pacific asked.

“The Mount’s Delta came from Nyvan; he was probably one of their citizens. None of their nations remain intact.”

“Not relevant, anyway,” said Western Europe.

“Agreed,” Military Intelligence said. “Once we’d stripped down the Mount’s Delta , we ran extremely thorough forensic tests on the life support capsule and its environmental systems. Analysis on the faecal residue left in the waste cycle mechanism identified the other occupant’s DNA for us. And this is where the story gets interesting, because we have a very positive match on his DNA.” Military Intelligence datavised the sensevise’s controlling processor, and the image above the table changed. Now it showed an image taken from Louise Kavanagh’s brain a few minutes before the warehouse was fired; a young man with a pale, stern face, dressed in a jet-black robe. The viewing angle was such that he looked down on the members of B7 with a derisory sneer. “Quinn Dexter. He was an Ivet shipped to Lalonde last year, sentenced for resisting arrest, the police thought he was running an illegal package into Edmonton. He was as it happens. Sequestration nanonics.”

“Oh Christ,” Central America muttered.

“The Kavanagh girl confirms he was on Norfolk, and both she and Fletcher Christian strongly suspect he was the one who took over the frigate Tantu . Following that, the Tantu made one unsuccessful attempt to penetrate Earth defences, and immediately withdrew, damaging itself in the process.”

Western Europe datavised the sensenviron management processor, and the image above the table changed again. “Dexter got to Nyvan. One of the surviving asteroids confirmed that the Tantu docked at Jesup asteroid. That’s when their real troubles started. Ships from Jesup planted the nukes in the abandoned asteroids.” He pointed at the image of Nyvan which had replaced Dexter. It was a world like nothing previously seen in the galaxy, as if a ball of lava had congealed in space, a crinkled black surface crust riddled with contorted fissures of radiant red light. The two atmospheric aspects were in constant conflict, supernatural and supernature boiling against each other with harrowing aggression.

“Dexter was there on Lalonde at incident one, according to Laton and our Edenist friends,” Western Europe said remorselessly. “He was on Norfolk, which we now recognize as the major distribution source of infection. He was at Nyvan which has elevated the crisis to a completely new stage; as far as we can tell one which has proved as hostile to the possessed as it is to the ordinary population. And now we are certain he arrived here at Supra- Brazil.” He looked directly at the South America supervisor.

“There was an alert at the Brazil tower station fifteen hours after the Mount’s Delta arrived,” South America said tonelessly. “Just after its descent, one of the lift capsules suffered exactly the kind of electronic glitches known to be inflicted by the possessed. We had the entire arrivals complex sealed and surrounded within ninety seconds. Nothing. No sign of any possessed.”

“But you think he’s here?” East Europe pressed.

South America smiled without humour. “We know he is. After the alert, we hauled in everyone who came down on the lift capsule, passengers and crew. This is what we got from several neural nanonics memory cells.” Nyvan faded away to show a slightly fuzzy two-dimensional picture, indicating a low-grade recording. The figure in the Royale Class lounge wearing a blue-silk suit, and slumped comfortably in a deep chair was undoubtedly Dexter.

“Merciful Allah,” North Pacific exclaimed. “We’ll have to shut down the vac-trains. It’s our one advantage. I don’t care how good he is at eluding our sensors, the little shit can’t walk a thousand kilometres along a vacuum tunnel. Isolate the bastard, and hit him with an SD platform strike.”

“I believe even we would have trouble shutting down the vac-trains,” South Pacific said significantly. “Not without questions being asked.”