given SD’s hellhawk liaison guy was now a mound of ash in the ruined control centre. Etchells was an unknown factor, capable of killing possessed humans. And Al was heading down into the Hilton.
“Disengage your targeting lock,” Etchells said.
“No way,” Emmet told him. “I want you a thousand kilometres away from this asteroid; you have thirty seconds to begin accelerating or I’ll fire.”
“Listen, bollockbrain. I have fifty combat wasps in my launch cradles, all with innumerable submunitions, all fitted with fusion warheads. Right now, they are all armed, and activated by a deadman code. You cannot train enough beam weapons on me to vaporise me and the missiles instantaneously. If you fire, they will detonate. I’m not sure if that much megatonnage will crack Monterey open or not. Would you like to find out?”
Emmet’s hands clamped round his head in an agony of frustration. I am not cut out for any of this shit. I want to go home.
What would Al do? It wasn’t such a good question. He had the horrible feeling that if you put Al in a Mexican stand-off he would shoot.
“You know, I might just,” he said stubbornly. “I’ve had a real shitty time today, and the Confederation Navy is on the way to make it worse.”
“I know the feeling,” Etchells said. “But I’m really not a threat to you.”
“Then what the hell are you doing there?”
“I have to ask someone a question. Once I’ve done that, I’ll leave. Give me five minutes, then you can start acting tough again. Deal?”
The expensive designer gloss had departed from the lounge in the Nixon suite. Mickey’s ill-judged attempt to beachhead the place had resulted in streamers of white fire slashing round in chaotic violence, and Kiera’s counter-attack had only made it worse. The lights were out, a tangle of broken pipes and cables hung down out of the ceiling, the furniture had burned enthusiastically and was now reduced to smoking embers. Torrents of energistic power poured upon the doors by both sides had turned them and the surrounding walls into a fantastic tract of heterogeneous crystal; long encrustations of quartz sprouted in jumbled antagonism, each branch fighting its neighbour like a forest of avaricious jewels. They writhed fluidly each time another burst of power doused them, growing slightly longer and more entwined.
Kiera worried that the continual assaults on the door were a diversion. She had two of her goons patrolling the other rooms, searching for the Organization gangsters grouping together on the other side of the suite’s walls and especially the ceiling. So far they hadn’t tried to break through, but it would be only a matter of time. Nobody was stupid enough to keep on trying the same route in when they were so thoroughly blocked. There was also the ammunition question. She was going to run out eventually.
One thing she’d made quite sure of was keeping in contact with her deputies. Hudson Proctor could use his affinity to talk to the remaining Valisk survivors positioned through the asteroid, who in turn kept in touch with their recruits through the net. Communications remained the key to any revolution.
Unfortunately, it didn’t guarantee success.
“Just how many people have declared for us?” Kiera asked.
Hudson Proctor took the figures he knew of, and added quite a few. No way was he about to deliver that much bad news by himself. “About a thousand in the asteroid.”
“What about the fleet?” she demanded. “How many ships?”
“Jull reported several dozen were heading for low orbit before Emmet’s crew wiped him out. But they wrecked the SD centre. Capone can’t use the platforms to intimidate anybody, in space or on the planet.”
“Where the hell is Luigi?”
“I don’t know, he hasn’t checked in.”
“Damn it, didn’t anyone listen to me? Luigi’s part was crucial, the fleet must follow us down to the planet. Capone is going to get us all slung back into the beyond.”
Hudson had heard the speech countless times already. He said nothing.
“I should have gone for the control centre, not Capone,” Kiera said. She looked at the crystalline bulwark, which undulated rapidly, twinkling with emerald light. One of her goons fired his machine gun through a gap where the doors used to be. “Maybe we should try and get up to the defence section, there’s bound to be an auxiliary control room.”
“We’ll never get past Pileggi,” Hudson said. “There’s too many of them.”
“Only if we make a break for it through the front.” Kiera tilted her head up to stare at the ceiling. “I’ll bet we can . . .” She trailed off as a silver-white starship with glowing engine nacelles rose ponderously into view outside the big window wall.
“Oh shit,” Hudson murmured. “That’s the
“Talk to her, find out what she wants.”
He licked his lips and began a frown which never really had time to form. “I can’t—oh.”
The hellhawk’s fantasy image burst. It dropped out of sight, rolling as it went. Another one glided up to replace it, a dark bird-shape with red-flecked reptile scales. Hudson grinned in relief. “Etchells.”
“Ask him if he can hit Pileggi with his lasers.”
“Right.” Hudson concentrated. “Uh, he says he has a question for you.”
Kiera’s processor block bleeped. Not taking her eyes off Hudson, she slipped it out of her jacket pocket. “Yes?”
“I need to know something,” Etchells said. “Do you believe the Navy mission to the Orion Nebula is a danger to us?”
“Of course I do, that’s why you and the others have been refitted with auxiliary fusion generators. It has to be investigated.”
“We agree on that, then.”
“Good. Now target the Organization grunts holding me in here, and I’ll eliminate Capone. With him out of the way I can assign antimatter warships to the flight. The threat can be dealt with properly.”
“Twenty-seven voidhawks have swallowed away from their patrol orbits without clearance. That means they have found an alternative source of nutrient fluid. Even if you gain control of the Organization, you will lose them.”
“But gain control of the antimatter.”
“The Confederation Navy is coming. Every orbital facility the planet has will be obliterated in their attack. Your strategy was to take New California out of the universe to a place of safety.”
“Yes?” she asked irritably. “So?”
“How do you propose to maintain the blackmail threat over the crews of the ships you dispatch to the nebula?”
Kiera turned from Hudson Proctor to look directly at the hellhawk on the other side of the window. “We’ll come up with something.”
“Your rebellion has failed. Capone is on his way with enough gangsters to overwhelm you.”
“Fuck you.”
“I sincerely believe the Navy mission is a threat to my continued existence in this form. That must be prevented. I intend to fly to Mastrit-PJ, and I’m offering you the chance to escape with me.”
“Why?”
“You have the arming codes for the combat wasps I have been loaded with. Admittedly they are only fusion warheads, but I will take you off the asteroid if you make those codes available to me.”
Kiera scanned round the ruined lounge. The machine guns opened fire again with a thunderclap tattoo. Sapphire light flexed hungrily within the crystals, causing them to expand further into the lounge. “Very well.”
The hellhawk surged forwards, its neck flattening out. Energistic power cloaked its hooked beak with a lambent red glow. The lounge’s window rippled as the tip pressed against it, then parted like water to allow the vast creature’s head into the lounge. A huge iris swivelled round to fix on Kiera. The beak parted to reveal an
