bottom of the pile. You gotta show the boss you can take the heat, right? If you can’t take it, you ain’t no use to him. You get kicked out, because there’s always some other wiseass who thinks he can do better.”
“Are you really Al Capone?”
Al ran his hands down his jacket lapel. “Check out the threads, sonny. Nobody else got my class.”
“So what do you want to talk to me for?”
“I need to know things. Now, I can’t offer you much in return. I mean, you ain’t too keen to come visit me in person. I can appreciate that, so I can’t give you no reward; dames, booze, that kind of thing. What I got plenty of is local currency. You heard about that?”
“Some kind of tokens?”
“Yeah. Tokens, backed up by my word. If I say you owe somebody something, then you have to pay. So I’ll owe you three favours. Me, Al Capone, I will personally go into debt to you. That’s bankable on any possessed planet. Now you can’t ask for stuff like world peace, or crap like that. But any service or help you need, it’s yours. Think of it as the ultimate insurance. I mean, us possessed, we’re spreading through this universe. So, you game?”
It wasn’t a smile, but the sullen scowl had gone. “Okay, what do you want to know?”
“First off, that other guy with you, the one you left behind. Is he here to kill me?”
“Gerald? Christ, no. He’s ill, real bad.” Jed brightened. “Hey, that’s my first favour. His name is Gerald Skibbow, and if you find him, I want you to bung him in a proper hospital with real doctors and stuff.”
“Okay. This is more like it, we got a dialogue here, you and me. Okay, Gerald Skibbow. If we find him, he gets good medical care. Now the other thing is, I want to know if you saw anyone else hanging around in that corridor when you found the corpse.”
“There was one bloke, yeah. I saw him through the glass in the door. Didn’t see much of him. Got a long nose. Oh, and really thick eyebrows. You know, the kind that meet over your nose.”
“Luigi,” Al growled. I should have known he’d side with Kiera. Disciplining people always sparks off a shitload of resentment. He’s going to have contacts among the fleet officers, too, a lot of contacts. She’ll love that. “Thanks kid, I still owe you a couple of favours.”
Jed gave an exaggerated nod. “Right.” His image faded out.
Al let out an infuriated breath. Partly angry at himself. He should have kept an eye on Luigi. It was this whole return setup. You couldn’t have a wiseguy whacked no more, because there was a good chance he’d come back somewhere on New California, and madder at you than when the beef started.
A wave of surprise and consternation flowed through the souls in the beyond, for once drawing Al’s attention. Something momentous was happening. Terror and awe at the event were the dominant sensations spiralling off from the relayed impression.
“What?” Al asked them. “What is it?”
Nothing like that first agonising blow against Mortonridge, thank Christ. When he concentrated on the slippery grey images fluttering from soul to soul he saw a sun with another sun erupting out of it. Space was filled with flame, and death flooded inexorably across the sky like a stormfront.
Arnstat!
“Holy Christ,” Al gasped. “Cameron? You seeing this?”
“Loud and clear. I think the hellhawks swallowed out.”
“Don’t blame them.” Organization warships were vanishing inside blossoming shells of dazzling white light.
The Confederation Navy had answered Trafalgar in a way he had never dreamed they would. Brute force on an irresistible level. His warships were helpless. Their precious antimatter useless. “Don’t they understand?” he asked the desperate souls. “Arnstat will go.”
Already flashes of joy were cutting through the beyond as a multitude of bodies were proffered for possession. The reality dysfunction around Arnstat began to strengthen as more and more possessed added themselves to its gestalt. With the Organization’s orbital weapons falling to earth in a rain of smoke there was nothing left to prevent them.
“Cameron, get me home. Fast.”
He knew what would happen. The Confederation Navy would visit New California next, its imminent arrival presenting Kiera with her main chance. This time the lieutenants and soldiers would most likely listen when she told them they should return to the planet.
A bad day getting worse.
The hostage families of the starship crew members were held on several floors of a hotel overlooking Monterey’s biosphere. During the day, they gathered together in the building’s lounges and public areas to provide each other with whatever mutual comfort they could muster. It wasn’t much. They had become a weary crowd surviving each day on shattered nerves: barely fed, denied information, ignored and despised in equal measure by their Organization guards.
Silvano and the two gangsters ushered Kingsley into the hotel’s conference suite. He saw Clarissa immediately, helping serve the morning meal. She caught sight of him and cried out, dropping her serving spatula into the pan of beans. Everybody watched as they embraced.
She was overjoyed to see him. For the first minute. Then Kingsley could stand the dishonesty no longer, and confessed what he had become. She stiffened, backing away in anguish. Wanting to block out the words, for them never to have been spoken.
“How did it happen?” she asked. “How did you die?”
“I was in a starship. There was an antimatter explosion.”
“Trafalgar?” she whispered. “Was it Trafalgar, Kingsley?”
“Yes.”
“Oh dear God. Not you. Not that.”
“I have to know something. I’m sorry I’m not asking about you—I should be, I guess—but this is the most important thing in the universe right now. Do you know where Webster is?”
She shook her head. “They keep us apart. He was assigned to the kitchen staff by that fat collaborator bastard Octavius. I used to see him every week. But it’s been over a fortnight since they brought him last. None of them will tell me anything.” She broke off at the strange smile rising on Kingsley’s face. “What is it?”
“He was telling the truth.”
“Who?”
“I was told that Webster had gotten away from the Organization, that he was on a starship. Now you tell me you haven’t seen him, and Capone can’t find him.”
“He’s free?” The knowledge overcame her reluctance, and she reached out to touch him again.
“It looks that way.”
“Who told you?”
“I don’t know. Someone very strange. Clarissa, believe me, there’s a lot more going on in this universe than we realised.”
Her smile was tragic. “I can hardly doubt my dead husband.”
“Time to go,” he said abruptly.
“Go where?”
“For you, anywhere but here. Capone owes me that, but I suspect I might have trouble trying to collect. So we’ll just take this one stage at a time.”
He walked over to the conference suite’s door, Clarissa following timidly behind him. The two gangsters lounging by the door straightened up as he approached; Silvano had disappeared, and they didn’t know what they were supposed to do.
“I’m leaving now,” Kingsley said in a smoothly reasonable tone. “Be sensible. Move aside.”
“Silvano won’t like this,” one said.
“Then he should tell me in person. It’s not your job.” He concentrated on the door, visualising it swinging open.
They tried to prevent it, focusing their own power on keeping it shut. A black magic version of arm wrestling.
