The Naked God — Flight

since the dawn of civilization, Marie’s sexuality was the one thing Gerald never dared dwell upon.

It would be that, he admitted in his dark heart. Night after night, Kiera would allow some man to run his hands over her. Would laugh and groan at the abuse. Would demand hot physical violations. Bodies writhing together in the darkness. Beautiful, strong bodies. Gerald whimpered softly.

“You okay?” Beth asked. Beside her, Jed was frowning.

“Fine,” Gerald whispered. His hands were rubbing his perspiring forehead, trying to massage the pain inside. “I just want to help her. And if I could just get to her, I know I could. Loren said so, you see.”

“We’ll be back there in no time, okay, no worries.”

He nodded lamely, returning to pick at the food they’d given him. He had to get to Marie soon. He was sorry about everyone else’s predicament, but what Marie was suffering was unspeakable. Next time they landed at Monterey, he decided, it would be different. No details, but definitely different.

Rocio was aware of Gerald’s ardent, fractured anxiety sinking back under calmer emotions. That man’s mind was a complete enigma. Not that Rocio actually wanted to be privy to such tortured thoughts. Shame that he couldn’t convince Beth and Jed to stay on board by themselves. This entourage of people were making his position more complicated. Ideally, he’d like to winnow the numbers down again.

Now that he was clear of the asteroid, he began to accelerate. Modifying the distortion field to generate ever-more powerful ripples in space-time. He surfed them at seven gees, a secondary manipulation alleviating the force around the life support section. As the sense of freedom rose in tandem with his speed, he allowed his dreamform to blossom. Dark wings slowly spread wide, sweeping eagerly, sending motes of interplanetary dust swirling in his wake. He shook his neck, blinking huge red eyes, flexing his talons. In this state, he was perfectly at one with himself and life. It reaffirmed the conviction that Kiera’s hold over himself and his comrades must be broken.

He began talking to the other hellhawks, probing for emotional nuances. Building a pattern of those who thought as he did. Of the seventy currently in the New California system, he thought there were possibly nineteen he could count on for open support, another ten would probably side with him if things looked favourable. Several were playing it very coy, while eight or nine, led by Etchells and Cameron Leung, revelled in the prospect of following the Organization fleet into glory. Good enough odds.

Eight hours into his patrol, Hudson Proctor delivered new instructions. There’s an interplanetary ship decelerating towards New California,kiera’s lieutenant said. Coming straight in along the south pole, one and a half million kilometres out. We think it’s come from the Almaden asteroid. Can you sense it?

Rocio expanded his distortion field, probing where Proctor indicated. The ship slithered into his perception as a tight kink of mass, alive with energy.

Got it,he acknowledged.

Intercept them, and order them to return.

Are they hostile?

I doubt it. Probably just another bunch of idiots who think they can live where they want instead of where the Organization tells them.

Understood. And if they don’t want to return?

Blow them to shit. Any questions?

No.

Rocio changed the distortion field again, concentrating it on a small area just ahead of his beak. Power surged through his patterning cells, and the stress he was applying leapt towards infinite. A wormhole interstice opened, and he shot through, emerging from the terminus less than two seconds later. It folded neatly behind his tailfeathers, returning local space-time to its usual consonance.

The interplanetary ship was three kilometres away, a long silk-grey splinter of metal and composite. Standard configuration of barrel-shaped life support module separated from the drive section by a lattice tower. It was decelerating at two thirds of a gee, blue-white fusion flame spearing cleanly from its exhaust. Rocio was also aware of another wormhole terminus opening five thousand kilometres away. A hellhawk slid out, deflating its distortion field immediately, and drifting inert. He resisted the temptation to hail it. Shadowing him in such a fashion to monitor his conduct was very unsubtle.

A radar pulse triggered the ship’s transponder: according to the code it was called the Lucky Logorn . Rocio matched velocities with it, and opened a short-range channel. “This is the Organization ship Mindori ,” he told them. “You’re approaching New California’s Strategic Defence network without clearance. Please identify yourself.”

“This is Deebank, I guess I’m the captain around here. We haven’t been advertising our presence in case we attracted those goddamn voidhawks. Sorry about that, didn’t mean to give you a scare. We’d like clearance to rendezvous with a low orbit station.”

“Clearance refused. Return to your asteroid.”

“Now just a goddamn minute, we’re loyal members of the Organization here. What gives you the right to order us about?”

Rocio activated a maser cannon on his lower hull, and targeted one of the thermo-dump panels plumbed into Lucky Logorn ’s equipment bay. “One. I’m not ordering you, I’m relaying an instruction from the Organization. Two.” He fired.

The blast of coherent maser radiation thumped a half-metre hole into the middle of the thermo-dump panel. Fluorescent orange shards spun away, their glimmer slowly fading to black.

“Fuck you,” Deebank shouted. “You bastards can’t keep us out here forever.”

“Realign your drive. Now. My second shot will be through your fusion tube. You’ll be left drifting out here. The only thing you’ll have to occupy yourselves with is a sweepstake. Is your food going to run out first? Or will it be the air? Then again, a voidhawk might pick you up, and you get used as research lab beasts by the Confederation.”

“You piece of shit.”

“I’m waiting.” Rocio slid closer, picking up the resentment and anger boiling through the eight people in the life support section. There was bitter resignation in there, too.

Sure enough, the fusion drive plume twitched round, sending Lucky Logorn on a shallow arc which would ultimately see it heading back to Almaden. Cancelling so much delta-V was a long, energy expensive business. It would take them hours.

“We’re going to remember you,” Deebank promised. “Time will come when you need to join us. Don’t expect it to be easy.”

“Join you where?” Rocio asked, genuinely curious.

“On a planet, dick-for-brains.”

“Is that what this was all about? Your fear of space?”

“What the hell did you think we were doing? Invading?”

“I wasn’t told.”

“Okay. So now you understand, will you let us through?”

“I can’t.”