Neutronium Alchemist - Conflict nd-4 Page 3

  As with most crews when they were docked, Joshua liked to book in at a hotel even if it was only for a single night. It wasn’t necessarily more convenient than staying in the Lady Mac , it just made a change. This time, though, the crew returned to the starship; and Joshua depressurized the airlock tube once they were all back on board. It would hardly stop anyone in an SII suit, but Lady Mac had her fair share of internal defence systems. And besides . . . at the back of his mind was the notion that a possessed would be hard-pressed to wear and operate a spacesuit; if Kelly was right, their rampant energistic ability would completely screw up the suit’s processors. He sealed himself up in his sleep cocoon with his paranoia reduced to its lowest level in days.

  It was a sombre breakfast as they began to drift into the galley cabin and collect their food five hours later. Everyone had accessed the local news companies. Ikela’s murder was the premier item.

  Ashly glanced at the galley’s AV pillar as he plugged his cereal packet into the milk nozzle.

  “Got to be a cover-up,” the pilot grunted. “Too much smoke, too little fire. The police should have made an arrest by now. Where’s someone as prominent as this Lamu character going to hide in an asteroid?”

  Joshua glanced up from his carton of grapefruit. “You think Mzu did it?”

  “No.” Ashly retrieved the now-chilly packet and gulped down a mouthful of the mushy wheat paste. “I think someone trying to get Mzu did it; Ikela just got in their way. The police must know that. They simply can’t blurt it out in public.”

  “So did they get her?” Melvyn asked.

  “Am I psychic?”

  “Such questions are irrelevant,” Beaulieu said. “We don’t have enough information to speculate in this fashion.”

  “We can certainly speculate on who else is trying to nab her,” Melvyn said. “For my money, it’s got to be the bloody intelligence agencies. If we can confirm she made it here, so can they. And that’s serious trouble, Captain. If they can kill someone like Ikela with impunity, they’re not going to worry much about riding over us.”

  Joshua switched his empty carton of grapefruit for a can of tea and a croissant. He stared around at his crew as he chewed on the bland pastry (another reason he liked hotels, free-fall food was always soft and tacky to avoid crumbs). Melvyn’s words were unsettling, none of them were really used to personal, one-on-one danger; starship combat was so very different. Then there was the possibility of encountering the possessed as well. “Beaulieu’s right, we don’t have enough data yet. We’ll spend the morning rectifying that. Melvyn and Ashly, you team up; I want you to concentrate on industrial defence contracts, see if you can find traces of the kind of things Mzu would require for retrieving and deploying the Alchemist. Principally, that’ll be a starship, but it’ll still need fitting out; if we’re really lucky she could have ordered some kind of customized equipment. Dahybi, Beaulieu; try and find out what happened to the Daphine Kigano alias, where she was last seen, her credit disk number, that kind of thing. I’m going to find out what I can about Ikela and his associates.”

  “What about me?” Sarha asked indignantly.

  “You’re on duty in here, and you don’t let anyone apart from us on board. From now on, there will always be one of us on the bridge. I don’t know that there are any possessed in Ayacucho, but I’m not risking it. There’s also the intelligence agencies to consider, along with local security forces, and whoever Mzu is lined up with. I think now might also be an appropriate time to take the serjeants out of zero-tau just in case events turn sour. We can pass them off as cosmoniks easily enough.”

  Ione was finding the whole sensation of independence most peculiar, both individually and in unison with the mirror fragment minds in the other serjeants. Her thoughts were fluttering across the affinity band like birds fleeing a hurricane.

  We must try and separate more,she said.

  To which her own thoughts replied: Absolutely.

  She felt like giggling; the kind of giggle that came from being tickled by a merciless lover: unwelcome yet inevitable.

  The affinity contact with the other three serjeants reduced, paring down to essential information: location, threat status, environment interpretation. She couldn’t help the little frisson of eagerness at the experience; this was the first time she had ever been anywhere outside Tranquillity. Ayacucho might not be much, but she was determined to soak in as much of it as she could.

  She was following Joshua out of the transit capsule which had delivered them from the spaceport. The axial chamber was just a low-gee bubble of rock, but at the same time it was a bubble of rock which she hadn’t seen before. Her first foreign world.

  Joshua got into a waiting tube lift and sat down. She chose the seat opposite him, the composite creaking as it adjusted to her weight.

  “This is all so strange,” she said as the lift moved off. “Part of me wants to be next to you.”

  His face became immobile. “Jesus, Ione, why the fuck did you shove your personality into the serjeants? Tranquillity’s would’ve been just fine.”

  “Why, Joshua Calvert, I do believe you’re embarrassed.”

  “Who me? Oh, no, I’m quite used to sexless two metre monstrosities making a pass at me.”

  “Don’t be so grumpy. It’s unbecoming. Besides, you should be grateful. My instinct is very protective towards you. That might give me an edge.”

  Joshua’s retort was lost somewhere in his throat.

  The lift’s doors opened on a public hall in the asteroid’s commercial district where several late office workers scurried to work while a pair of mechanoids cleaned the walls and floor. It was less spartan than the axial chamber, with a high, arched roof and troughs of plants spaced at regular intervals. But it was still only a tunnel through rock, nothing exuberant. Unfortunately the serjeant didn’t have lips that could easily be compressed into a pout, otherwise she would have done it. She really wanted to see the biosphere cavern.

  Joshua started off down the hall.

  “What do you hope to accomplish here?” she asked.

  “T’Opingtu is a big company; someone will have been appointed to run it straightaway. And Ikela would make sure his replacement is someone he can trust, someone from his immediate circle. It’s not much, but it’s the best lead we’ve got.”

  “I really don’t think you’ll be able to get an appointment today.”

  “Don’t be such a downer, Ione. Your trouble is Tranquillity is incorruptible and logical, that’s all you’re used to. Asteroids like Ayacucho are neither. The size of the contract I’m going to dangle in their faces will get me straight into the top office. There’s an etiquette to this kind of business.”

  “Very well, you get in. Then what?”

  “I won’t know until I get there. Remember this is strictly a data acquisition mission, everything is helpful even if it is only negative. So keep your senses open and your memory on full record.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Okay, now we’re primarily interested in anything we can learn about Ikela’s life. We know he was an Garissan refugee, so who did he move with from the past, was he a strong nationalist? Names, contacts, that kind of stuff.”

  “My personality didn’t suffer any damage during the replication process, I can think for myself.”

  “Wonderful. A bodyguard with an attitude.”

  “Joshua, darling, this isn’t attitude.”

  He stopped and jabbed a finger at the husky construct. “Now look—”

  “That’s Pauline Webb,” Ione said.

  “What? Who?”

  Three people were marching down the public hall towards Joshua. Two African-ethnic men flanking a white woman. He didn’t like the look of the men at all; they were wearing civilian suits, but combat armour would have been more appropriate. Boosted, and no doubt containing a wide variety of extremely lethal implants.

  Pauline Webb stopped a couple of metres short of Joshua and gave the serjeant a curious glan
ce. “Your appointment is cancelled, Calvert. Collect your crew, get back in your starship, and go home. Today.”

  Joshua produced his most nonchalant grin. “Pauline Webb. Fancy seeing you here.”

  Her narrowed eyes gave the serjeant another suspicious glance. “This situation is not your concern anymore.”

  “It is everybody’s concern,” Ione said. “Especially mine.”

  “I didn’t know you things could operate independently.”

  “Now you do,” Joshua said politely. “So if you’ll just step aside . . .”

  The man directly in front of Joshua folded his arms and planted his feet slightly apart, a true immovable object. He smiled carnivorously down at Joshua.

  “Er, perhaps we could come to an arrangement?”

  “The arrangement is simple,” Webb said. “If you leave, you get to live.”

  “Come on, Joshua,” Ione said. The serjeant’s all-too-human hand closed on his shoulder, forcing him to turn.

  “But—”

  “Come on.”

  “That’s smart advice,” Webb said. “Listen to it.”

  Ione let go of his shoulder after a few paces. A fuming Joshua allowed her to escort him back down the hall towards the lift. When he glanced over his shoulder Webb and her two troopers were standing watching him.

  “This isn’t her turf,” he hissed at the serjeant. “We could have caused a scene, made trouble for her. The police would have sorted her out as well as us.”

  “Any incident with the authorities here would have been resolved in her favour. She’s a CNIS officer assigned to Mzu; the local Navy Bureau would have backed her, and you and I would be in deep shit, not to mention jail.”

  “How the hell did Webb know where I was going?”

  “I imagine Lady Mac ’s crew is under clandestine surveillance right now.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Quite. We will have to withdraw and come up with a new strategy.”

  They reached the lift doors, and Joshua datavised for a ride back to the axial chamber. He cast another glance over his shoulder to check on Webb, a sly smile germinating on his face. “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “The agencies don’t have her yet. We’re still in with a chance.”

  “That’s logical.”

  “Of course it’s logical. We may even be able to turn this to our advantage.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll tell you when we’re back in Lady Mac . Everyone’s going to have to undergo decontamination first. Christ knows what sort of covert nanonics they’ve stung us with. We’ll be broadcasting our own thoughts back to them if we’re not careful.”

  The lift doors opened and he stepped inside. Someone had slapped half a dozen twenty-centimetre circular holomorph stickers at random over the walls, with a couple more on the ceiling. One was at head height; it started its cycle, a tight bud of lavender photons swelling out from the centre into the form of a scantily clad teenage cheerleader. She shook her silver baton enthusiastically. “Run, Alkad, run!” she yelled. “You’re our last hope; don’t let them catch you. Run, Alkad, run!”

  Joshua stared at it in stupefaction. “Jesus wept.”

  The cheerleader winked saucily, and syphoned back down below the sticker’s surface. Three more began their cycle.

  Chapter 02

  Arnstadt fell to the Organization fleet after a ninety-minute battle above the planet. The Strategic Defence network was hammered into oblivion by Capone’s antimatter-powered combat wasps. There had been some advance warning from the Edenists, giving the local navy time to redeploy their ships. Three squadrons of voidhawks had arrived from the habitats orbiting one of the system’s gas giants, reinforcing the Adamist vessels.

  None of the preparations altered the final outcome. Forty-seven Arnstadt navy ships were destroyed, along with fifteen voidhawks. The remaining voidhawks swallowed away, withdrawing back to the gas giant.

  The Organization fleet’s transport starships moved unopposed into low orbit, and spaceplanes began to ferry a small army of possessed down to the surface. Like all modern Confederation planets, Arnstadt had few soldiers. There were several marine brigades, which were mainly trained in space warfare techniques and covert mission procedures. Wars in this era were fought between starships. The days of foreign invasion forces marching across enemy territory had vanished before the end of the twenty-first century.

  With its SD network reduced to radioactive meteorites flaring through bruised skies, Arnstadt was incapable of offering the slightest resistance to the possessed marching down out of their spaceplanes. Small towns were infiltrated first, increasing the numbers of possessed available to move on to larger towns. The area of captured ground began to increase exponentially.

  Luigi Balsmao set up his headquarters in one of the orbiting asteroid settlements. Information on the people captured by the advancing possessed was datavised up to the asteroid where the structure coordination programs written by Emmet Mordden decided if they should be possessed or not. Organization lieutenants were appointed, their authority backed up by the firepower of fleet starships in low orbit.

  With the subjugation of the planet confidently under way, Luigi split half of the fleet into squadrons and deployed them against the system’s asteroid settlements. Only the Edenist habitats were left alone; after Yosemite, Capone wasn’t about to risk a second defeat on such a scale.

  Starships were dispatched back to New California, and fresh cargo ships began to arrive soon, bringing with them the basic components for a new SD network along with other equipment to help consolidate the Organization’s advance. Rover reporters were allowed to see carefully selected sections of the planet under its new masters: children left non-possessed to run around freely, possessed and non-possessed working side by side to restart the economy, Luigi stamping down hard on any possessed who didn’t acknowledge the Organization’s leadership.

  News of the successful invasion swept across the Confederation, backed up by sensevise recordings from the reporters. Surprise was total. One star system’s government—no matter what its nature—taking over another was a concept always considered totally impossible. Capone had proved it wasn’t. In doing so he set off a chain reaction of panic. Commentators began to talk about planetary level exponential curves, the most extreme showing the entire Confederation falling to the Organization within six months as the industrial resources of more and more systems were absorbed by Capone’s empire.

  On the Assembly floor, demands that the Confederation Navy should intervene and destroy the Organization fleet became almost continuous. First Admiral Aleksandrovich had to make several appearances to explain how impractical the notion was. The best the navy could do, he said, was to seek out the source of Capone’s antimatter and prevent a third system from being taken over. Arnstadt was already lost. Capone had secured a victory which couldn’t be reversed without a great loss of life. At this stage, such casualties were wholly unacceptable. He also pointed out that, sadly, a great many non-possessed crews were cooperating with the Organization to operate their starships. Without them, the invasion of Arnstadt could never have happened. Perhaps, he suggested, the Assembly should consider introducing an emergency act to deal with any such traitors. Such legislation might, in future, discourage captains seeking to sign up with Capone for short term gain.

  • • •

  “Escort duties?” André Duchamp asked wearily. “I thought we were here to help defend New California itself. What exactly does this escort duty entail?”

  “Monterey hasn’t given me a detailed briefing,” Iain Girardi said. “But you will simply be protecting cargo ships from attack by the Confederation Navy. Which is exactly what your contract stipulated.”

  “Hardly,” Madeleine growled. “Nor does it say anywhere that we help a deranged dictator who wiped out an entire fucking planet. I say jump out, Captain. Power up the patterning nodes right now and get the fuck out of here wh
ile we still can.”

  “I would have thought this was a more appealing task for you,” Iain Girardi said. His acceleration couch webbing peeled back, and he drifted off the cushioning. “The majority of the crews in the cargo ships are non-possessed, and you won’t be permanently in range of the Organization’s SD platforms. If anything, we’re giving you an easier job with less risk for the same money.”

  “Where would we be going?” André asked.

  “Arnstadt. The Organization is shipping industrial equipment there to help restart the planetary economy.”

  “If they hadn’t blown it all to shit in the first place they wouldn’t need to restart it,” Madeleine said.

  André shushed her impatiently. “It seems fine to me,” he told Iain Girardi. “However, the ship will require some maintenance work before we can undertake such an assignment. An escort flight is very different from supplementing planetary defences.”

  Iain Girardi’s humour appeared strained for the first time. “Yes. I’ll have to discuss the nature of the repairs with Monterey.” He datavised the flight computer for a communications channel.

  André waited with a neutral smile.

  “The Organization will bring the Villeneuve’s Revenge up to full combat-capable status,” Iain Girardi announced. “Your hull and sensor suite will be repaired by us, but you must meet the cost of secondary systems.”

  André shrugged. “Take it out of our fee.”

  “Very well. Please dock at Monterey’s spaceport, bay VB757. I shall disembark there; you’ll be assigned a liaison officer for the mission.”

  “Non-possessed,” Desmond Lafoe said sharply.

  “Of course. I believe they want you to take some reporters with you, as well. They’ll require access to your sensors during the flight.”

  “Merde. Those filth. What for?”

  “Mr Capone is highly focused on the need for accurate publicity. He wants the Confederation to see that he is not a real threat.”

  “Unlike Arnstadt,” Madeleine said swiftly.