The Night's Dawn Trilogy (303 page)

She opened fire. First priority was to suppress the possessed, give them so much to worry about they’d be unable to continue
their own assault. Two of the guns she held were rapid-fire machine pistols, capable of firing over a hundred bullets a second.
She used them in half-second bursts, swinging them in fast arcs. The windows, surrounding panels, stress rods, and secondary
structural girders disintegrated into an avalanche of scything chips as the bullets savaged them. The heavy-calibre rifles
followed, explosive-tipped shells chewing ferociously at the edges of the initial devastation. Then she began slamming rounds
into the panelling where she estimated the walkway the possessed were using was situated.

“Go!” she bellowed from both throats. “Get inside, there’s cover there.”

Joshua rolled over fast and started sprinting. Melvyn was right behind him. There was nothing to hear above the bone-jarring
vibration of the rifles, no pounding footsteps or shouts of alarm. He just kept running.

A streamer of white fire churned through the air above him. It was hard to distinguish in the light fluxing down from the
orbital battle. The foundry yard was soaked in a brightness twice as great as the noonday sun, a glare made all the worse
by the snow.

Ione saw the fire coming right at her down one half of her vision and pointed the rifle and machine gun along the angle of
approach. She held the triggers down on both of them, bullets flaring indigo as if they were tracer rounds. The white fire
struck, and she cancelled the serjeant’s tactile nerves, banishing pain. Her machine-gun magazine was exhausted, but she kept
on firing the rifle, holding it steady even though the fire burned away her eyes along with her leathery skin.

Then her consciousness was in only one of the bitek constructs; she could see the flaming outline of the other fall to the
ground. And shadows were flittering in the dusk behind the yawning hole she’d blasted in the wall. She slapped a new magazine
in the machine gun and raised both barrels.

Joshua had just passed Mzu’s car when the explosive
round went crack mere centimetres from his skull. He
flinched, throwing his arms up defensively. A small door in
the shed wall just in front of him disintegrated. It took a
tremendous act of trust, but he kept on going. Ione had
opened the way. There had to be some kind of sanctuary in
there.

•  •  •

Alkad Mzu didn’t regard the interior of Disassembly Shed Four as sanctuary, exactly, but she was grateful to reach it nonetheless.
The cars were still pursuing her, berserk highspeed skids and swerves across the road showing just how intent their occupants
were. At least inside the shed she could choose her opponents.

Just as Ngong closed the small door she caught a glimpse of the surviving police cars leaping the swing bridge, their blue
and red strobes flashing. The snow was hot with irradiated light from the battle above, and growing ever brighter. Ngong clanged
the door shut and slammed the bolts across.

Alkad stood waiting for her retinal implants to adjust to the sombre darkness. It took them longer than it should; and her
neural nanonics were totally off-line. Baranovich was close.

They made their way forwards through a forest of metal pillars. The shed’s framework structure extended some distance from
the panel wall it was supporting, uncountable trusses and struts melding together in asymmetric junctions. Looking straight
up, it was impossible to see the roof, only the labyrinthine intertexture of black metal forming an impenetrable barrier.
Each tube and I-beam was slick with water, beads of condensation tickled by gravity until they dropped. With the shed’s conditioning
turned off, the inside was a permanent drizzle.

Alkad led the others forwards, out from under the artless pillars. There was no ironberg in the huge basin at the middle of
the shed, so the water was slopping quietly against the rim. The cranes, the gantry arms with their huge fission blades, the
mobile inspection platforms, all of them hung still and silent around the sides of the central high bay. Sounds didn’t echo
here, they were absorbed by the prickly fur of metal inside the walls. Scraps of light escaped through lacunas in the roof
buttresses, producing a crisscross of white beams that always seemed to fade away before they reached the ground. Big seabirds
scurried about through the air, endlessly swapping perches as if they were searching for the perfect vantage point.

“Up here, Dr Mzu,” a voice called out.

She turned around, head tilted back, hand held in a salute to shield her face from the gentle rain. Baranovich was standing
on a walkway forty metres above the ground, leaning casually against the safety railing. His colourful Cossack costume shone
splendidly amid the gloom. Several people stood in the shadows behind him.

“All right,” she said. “I’m here. Where’s my transport off-planet? From what I can see, there’s some difficulty in orbit right
now.”

“Don’t get smart with me, Doctor. The Organization isn’t going to be wiped out by one small war between SD platforms.”

“Lodi is up there,” Gelai said quietly. “The other possessed are becoming agitated by the approaching cars.”

“I don’t suppose it will,” Alkad shouted back. “So our arrangement still stands. You let Lodi go, and I’ll come with you.”

“The arrangement, Doctor, was that you come alone. But I’m a reasonable man. I’ll see to it that you reach the Organization.
Oh, and here’s Lodi.”

He was flung over the safety barrier just as Ione’s guns started to demolish the windows and panelling. His screams were lost
amid the roar of the explosive arounds. Arms windmilled in pathetic desperation, their motion caught by the strobe effect
of the explosions. He hit the carbon concrete with a dreadful wet thud.

“See, Doctor? I let him go.”

Alkad stared at the lad’s body, desperate to reject what she’d seen. It was, she realized in some shock, the first time she’d
actually witnessed somebody being killed. Murdered.

“Mother Mary, he was just a boy.”

Voi whimpered behind her.

Baranovich was laughing. Those on the walkway with him joined hands. A plume of white fire speared down towards Alkad.

Both Gelai and Ngong grabbed hold of her arms. When the white fire hit, it was like a sluice of dazzling warm water. She swayed
backwards under the impact, crying out from surprise rather than pain. The strike abated, leaving her itching all over.

“Step aside,” Baranovich shouted angrily. “She belongs to us.”

Gelai grinned evilly and raised a hand as if to wave. The walkway under Baranovich’s feet split with a loud brassy creak.
He gave a dismayed yell and made a grab for the safety rail.

“Run!” Gelai urged.

Alkad hesitated for an instant, looking back at Lodi’s body for any conceivable sign of life. There was too much blood for
that. Together with the others, she pelted back to the relative safety of the metal support pillars.

“I can’t die yet,” she said frantically. “I have to get to the Alchemist first. I have to, it’s the only way.”

A figure stepped out in front of her. “Dr Mzu, I presume,” said Joshua. “Remember me?”

She gaped at him, too incredulous to speak. Three other men were standing behind him; two of them were nervously pointing
machine guns at Gelai and Ngong.

“Who is
this?”
a very confused Voi asked.

Alkad gave a little laugh that was close to hysteria. “Captain Calvert, from Tranquillity.”

Joshua clicked his heels and did a little bow. “On the button, Doc. I’m flattered. And
Lady Mac’s
in orbit here ready to take you back home. The Lord of Ruin is pretty pissed at you for disappearing, but she says she’ll
forgive you providing your nasty little secret stays secret forever.”

“You work for Ione Saldana?”

“Yeah. She’ll be here in the sort-of flesh in a minute to confirm the offer. But right now, my priority is to get you and
your friends out of here.” He gave Gelai and Ngong the eye. “Some of your friends. I don’t know what the story with these
two is, but I’m not having—” The cold, unmistakable shape of a pistol muzzle was pressed firmly into the back of his neck.

“Thank you, Captain Calvert,” Monica’s voice purred
with triumph. “But us professionals will take it from here.”

•  •  •

The air on board the
Urschel
was clotted by rank gases and far too much humidity. Those conditioning filters still functioning emitted an alarmingly loud
buzzing as fan motors spun towards overload. Innumerable light panels had failed, hatch actuators were unreliable at best,
discarded food wrappers fluttered about everywhere.

Cherri Barnes hated the sloppiness and disorder. Efficiency on a starship was more than just habit, it was an essential survival
requirement. A crew was utterly dependent on its equipment.But two of the possessed (her fellow possessed, she tried to tell
herself) were from the late nineteenth-early twentieth century. Arrogant oafs who didn’t or wouldn’t understand the basic
preconditions of shipboard routine. And their so-called commander, Oscar Kearn, didn’t seem too bothered, either. He just
assumed that the non-possessed crew would go around scooping up the shit. They didn’t.

Cherri had given up advising and demanding. She was actually quite surprised that they’d survived the orbital battle for so
long—although antimatter-powered combat wasps did load the odds in their favour. And for once the non-possessed were understandably
performing their duties with a high level of proficiency. There was little for the possessed to do except wait. Oscar Kearn
occupied himself by studying the hologram screen displays, and muttering the odd comment to his non-possessed subordinate.
In reality he was contributing little, other than continually urging their combat wasps be directed at the voidhawks. The
concept of keeping a reserve for their own defence seemed elusive.

When the explosions and energy cascades outside the hull were reaching an appalling crescendo, Cherri slipped quietly out
of the bridge. Under ordinary combat conditions the companionways linking the frigate’s four life-support capsules should
have been sealed tight. Now, she glided past open hatches as she made her way along to B capsule’s maintenance engineering
deck. As soon as she was inside she closed the ceiling hatch and engaged the manual lock.

She pulled herself over to one of the three processor consoles and tapped the power stud. Not being able to datavise the frigate’s
flight computer was a big hindrance; she wasn’t used to voice response programs. Eventually, though, she established an auxiliary
command circuit, cutting the bridge officers out of the loop. The systems and displays she wanted slowly came on-line.

Combat wasps and their submunitions still flocked through space above Nyvan, though not quite as many as before. And the blanket
electronic warfare interference had ended; quite simply, there were no SD platforms left intact to wage that aspect of the
conflict.

One of the ten phased array antennae positioned around the
Urschel
’s hull focused on the
Lady Macbeth
. Cherri pulled herself closer to the console’s mike.

“Is anyone receiving this? Sarha, Warlow, can you hear me? If you can, use a five-millimetre aperture signal maser for a direct
com return. Do not, repeat not lock on to
Urschel
’s main antenna.”

“Signal acknowledged,” a synthesised voice replied. “Who the hell is this?”

“Warlow, is that you?”

“No, Warlow isn’t with us anymore. This is Sarha Mitcham, acting first officer. Who am I speaking with?”

“Sarha, I’m sorry, I didn’t know about Warlow. It’s Cherri Barnes, Sarha.”

“God, Cherri, what the hell are you doing on an Organization frigate?”

Cherri stared at the console, trying to get a grip on her raging emotions. “I… I belong here, Sarha. I think. I don’t know
anymore. You just don’t know what it’s like in the beyond.”

“Oh, fuck, you’re a possessor.”

“Guess so. Not by choice.”

“Yeah. I know. What happened to
Udat
, Cherri? What happened to you?”

“It was Mzu. She killed us. We were a complication to her. And Meyer. . . she had a grudge. Be careful of her, Sarha, be very
careful.”

“Christ, Cherri, is this on the level?”

“Oh, yes, I’m on the level.”

“Acknowledged. And… thanks.”

“I haven’t finished. Joshua’s down on Nyvan chasing after Mzu, we know that much.”

“Okay, he’s down there. Cherri, please don’t ask me why. I can’t discuss it.”

“That’s okay. I understand. It doesn’t matter; we know about the Alchemist, and you know we know. But you have to tell Joshua
to back off, he must get away from Mzu. Right away. We know we can’t get her offplanet now our space-planes are gone. That
means the Organization has only one option. If she’s dead, she’ll have to join us.”

“Is that why
Urschel
and
Pinzola
were shooting at the ground?”

“Yes. But that’s not all—”

•  •  •

The timid, halting voice echoed around
Lady Macbeth
’s bridge. It sent something like cold electricity racing down Liol’s nerves. He turned his head to look at Sarha, who seemed
equally stupefied.

“Is she for real?” he asked, praying the answer would be no. Events seemed to be pushing them towards an inevitable active
response. Despite his outward bravado back on the station, he had distinctly mixed feelings about piloting
Lady Mac
under conditions any more adverse than their current ones—though a rogue part of his mind was determined that Sarha would
never know that. Egotism was obviously the opposite trait of his intuition, the Calvert family’s Achilles heel.

“I knew her,” was all Sarha would say, and that reluctantly. “Beaulieu, can you confirm that ironberg’s trajectory?”

“I will have to use active sensor analysis to obtain its precise flight path.”

“Do it.”

“We’re thirty minutes from Joshua’s horizon,” Liol said. Alternative orbital trajectories were flashing through his mind as
he datavised the flight computer for possible vectors.