The Night's Dawn Trilogy (312 page)

Jed looked at the console; its symbology meant nothing to him, for all he knew the flight computer could be displaying schematics
for
Leonora Cephei
’s waste cycling equipment. He felt shamed by his own technological ignorance. He only ever came into the compartment when
he was summoned by Knox; and the only summonses he got was when the captain found something new to complain about. He now
made damn sure he brought Beth and Skibbow with him each time; it made the whole experience a little less like being humiliated
by Digger.

“If this is the coordinate, they’ll be here,” Jed insisted. This was the right time for the rendezvous. So where was the starship?
He didn’t want to look at Beth again. She didn’t appear entirely sympathetic to his plight.

“Another hour,” Knox said. “That’s what I’ll give you, then we head for Tanami. There are some cargoes for me there. Real
ones.”

“We’ll wait a damn sight more than one hour, matey,” Beth said.

“You get what you paid for.”

“In that case we’ll be here for six months; that’s how much cash we bloody well shelled out.”

“One hour.” Knox’s pale skin was reddening again; he wasn’t used to his command decisions being questioned on his own bridge.

“Balls. We’re here for as long as it takes, pal. Right, Jed?”

“Er. Yes. We should wait a bit longer.” Beth’s silent contempt made him want to cringe.

Knox gestured broadly in mock-reasonableness. “Long enough for the oxygen to run out, or can we head for port before that?”

“You regenerate the atmosphere,” Beth said. “Stop being such a pain. We wait until our transport turns up. That’s final.”

“You flaming kids, you’re all crazy. You don’t see my children becoming Deadnights. Deadheads more like. What do you think
is going to happen to you if you ever reach Valisk? That Kiera is bullshitting you.”

“No she’s not!” Jed said heatedly.

Knox was surprised at his resentment. “Okay, kid. I understand, I used to let my balls think for me when I was your age.”
He winked at Beth.

She glowered back at him.

“We wait as long at it takes,” Gerald said quietly. “We are going to Valisk. All of us. That’s what I paid you for, Captain.”
It was hard for him to be silent when people talked about Marie, especially the way they talked about her, as if she were
some kind of communal girlfriend. Since the voyage started he had managed to hold his tongue. He found life a lot easier on
board the small ship; the simple daily routine in which everything was laid out for him in advance was quite a comfort. So
what they said about Marie, their idolization of the demon who controlled her, didn’t snarl him up with anguish. They spoke
from ignorance. He was wise to that. Loren would be proud of him for exercising such control.

“All right, we’ll wait awhile,” Knox said. “It’s your charter.” It always embarrassed him when Skibbow spoke. The man had
episodes
, you never knew how he was going to behave. So far there had been no anger or violence. So far.

Fifteen minutes later, Captain Knox’s little quandaries and problems were banished as the radar detected a small object three
kilometres away which hadn’t been there a millisecond before. There was the usual weird peripheral fuzz indicating a wormhole
terminus, and the object was expanding rapidly. He accessed the
Leonora Cephei
’s sensors to watch the bitek starship emerging.

“Oh, sweet Christ Almighty,” he groaned. “You crazy bastards. We’re dead meat now. Bloody dead!”

Mindor
slipped out of the wormhole terminus and stretched its wings wide. Its head swung around so that one eye could fix the
Leonora Cephei
with a daunting stare.

Jed looked into one of the bridge’s AV pillars, seeing the huge hellhawk flap its wings in slow sweeps, closing the distance
with deceptive speed. Disquiet gave way to a kind of reverence. He whooped enthusiastically and hugged Beth. She grinned indulgently
back at him.

“That’s something, huh?”

“Sure is.”

“We did it, we bloody did it.”

A terrified Captain Knox ignored the babbling, insane kids and ordered the main communications dish to point at Pinjarra so
he could call the Trojan cluster capital for help. Not, he guessed, that it would do the slightest good.

Rocio Condra was ready for it. After several dozen clandestine pickups he knew exactly how the captains reacted to his appearance.
Out of the eight short-range defence lasers secured to his hull, only three were still functioning, and that was only because
they utilized bitek processor control circuitry. The rest had succumbed to the vagaries of his energistic power, which he
could never quite contain. He targeted the dish as it started to track around, and sent a half-second pulse into its central
transmission module.

“Do not attempt to contact anyone,” he broadcast.

“I understand,” a shaken Knox datavised.

“Good. Are you carrying Deadnights for transfer?”

“Yes.”

“Stand by for rendezvous and docking. Tell them to be ready.”

The monster bird folded its wings as it manoeuvred closer to the spindly inter-orbit craft. Its outline began to waver as
it rolled around its long axis; feathers giving way to dull green polyp, avian shape reverting to the earlier compressed-cone
hull. There were changes, though: the scattered purple rings were now long ovals, mimicking its feather pattern. Of the three
rear fins, the central one had shrunk, while the two outer ones had elongated and flattened back.

With the roll manoeuvre complete,
Mindor’s
life-support module lay parallel to the
Leonora Cephei
. Rocio Condra extended the airlock tube. Now, he could sense the minds inside the inter-orbit ship’s life-support capsule.
It contained the usual split between trepidatious crew and ridiculously exuberant Deadnights. This time there was an addition,
a strange mind, dulled yet happy, with thoughts moving in erratic rhythms.

He watched with idle curiosity through the internal optical sensors as the Deadnights came aboard. The interior of the life-support
module had come to resemble a nineteenth-century steamship, with a profusion of polished rosewood surfaces and brass fittings.
According to the pair of possessed, Choi-Ho and Maxim Payne, who served as maintenance crew, there was also a fairly realistic
smell of salt water. Rocio was pleased with the realism, which was far more detailed and solid than the possessed usually
achieved. That was due to the nature of the hellhawk’s neuron cell structure which contained hundreds of subnodes arranged
in processorlike lattices. They were intended to act as semi-autonomic regulators for his technological modules. Once he had
conjured up the image he wanted and loaded it into a subnode it was maintained without conscious thought, and with an energistic
strength unavailable to an ordinary human brain.

The last few weeks had been a revelation to Rocio Condra. After the initial bitter resentment, he had discovered that life
as a hellhawk was about as rich as it was possible to have, although he did miss sex. And he’d been talking to some of the
others about that; theoretically they could simply grow the appropriate genitalia (those that didn’t insist on imagining themselves
as techno starships). If they accomplished that, there was no real reason to go back into human bodies. Which of course would
make them independent of Kiera. For an entity that lived forever, the variety which would come from trying out a new creature’s
body and life cycle every few millennia might just be the final answer to terminal ennui.

Accompanying the revelation was a growing resentment at the way Kiera was using them—to which the prospect of fighting for
Capone was a worrying development. Even if he was offered a human body now, Rocio was doubtful he wanted to go with the habitat.
He wasn’t frightened of space like the rest of the returned souls, not anymore, not possessing this magnificent creature.
Space and all its emptiness was to be loved for its freedom.

Gravity returned slowly as Gerald drifted through the airlock tube, his shoulder bag in tow. The airlock compartment he landed
in was almost identical to the one he had left behind. But it was larger, its technology more discreet, and outside the hatch
Choi-Ho and Maxim Payne greeted him with smiles and comforting words where behind Knox and his eldest son had stood guard
over their hatch with TIP carbines and scowls.

“There are several cabins available,” Choi-Ho said. “Not enough for everyone, so you’ll probably have to double up.”

Gerald smiled blankly, which came over more as a frightened grimace.

“Pick any one,” she told him kindly.

“When will we get there?” Gerald asked.

“We have a rendezvous in the Kabwe system in eight hours, after that we’ll be going back to Valisk. It should be about twenty
hours.”

“Twenty? Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Twenty.” It was said with deference. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, quite sure.” People were starting to bunch up in the airlock behind him; all of them curiously reluctant to push past.
“A cabin,” she suggested hopefully.

“Come on, Gerald, mate,” Beth said breezily. She took his arm and pulled gently. He walked obediently down the corridor with
her. He only stopped once, and that was to look over his shoulder and say an earnest, “Thank you,” to an oddly intrigued Choi-Ho.

Beth kept going right to the end of the U-shaped corridor. She thought it would be best to get Gerald a cabin away from the
rest of the Deadnights. “Can you believe this place?” she said. She was walking on a deep red carpet past portholes that shone
brilliant beams of sunlight into the corridor (although she couldn’t see out through them). The doors were all golden wood.
In her usual sweatshirt, two jackets, and baggy jeans she felt uncomfortably out of place.

She peered around a door and found an empty cabin. There were two bunk beds clipped to a wall, and a small sliding door to
the bathroom. The plumbing was similar to the toilet in the
Leonora Cephei
, except this was all heavy brass with small white glazed ceramic buttons.

“This ought to do you,” she said confidently. A quiet pule made her turn around. Gerald was standing just inside the door,
his knuckles pressed into his mouth.

“What’s the matter, Gerald?”

“Twenty hours.”

“I know. But that’s good, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure. I want to be there, to see her again. But she’s not her anymore, not my Marie.”

He was quaking. Beth put an arm around his shoulders and eased him down onto the bottom bunk. “Easy there, Gerald. Once we’re
at Valisk, all this is going to seem like a bad dream; honestly, mate.”

“It doesn’t end there, it starts there. And I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to save her. I can’t put her in zero-tau
by myself. They’re so strong, and evil.”“Who, Gerald? Who are you talking about? Who’s Marie?”

“My baby.”

He was crying now, his head pressed into her shoulder. She patted the back of his neck instinctively.

“I don’t know what to do,” he gasped out. “She’s not here to help me.”

“Marie’s not here?”

“No. Loren. She’s the only one that can help me. She’s the only one who can help any of us.”

“It’s all right, Gerald, really, you’ll see.”

The reaction wasn’t what she expected at all. Gerald started a hysterical laugh which was half screams. Beth wanted to let
go and get out of the cabin fast. He’d flipped, totally flipped now. The only reason she kept hold of him was because she
didn’t know what would happen if she didn’t. He might get worse.

“Please, Gerald,” she begged. “You’re frightening me.”

He grabbed both of her shoulders, squeezing hard enough to make her flinch. “Good!” His face had reddened with anger. “You
should be frightened, you stupid, stupid little girl. Don’t you understand where we’re going?”

“We’re going to Valisk,” Beth whispered.

“Yes, Valisk. That doesn’t frighten me, I’m bloody terrified. They’re going to torture us, hurt you so bad you’ll beg a soul
to possess you and stop them. I know they will. That’s all they ever do. They did it to me before, and then Dr Dobbs made
me go through it again, and again and again just so he could know what it was like.” The anger drained out of him, and he
sagged forwards into her awkward embrace. “I’ll kill myself. Yes. Maybe that’s it. I can help Marie that way. I’m sure I can.
Anything’s better than possession again.”

Beth started rocking him as best she could, soothing him as she would any five-year-old who’d woken from a nightmare. The
things he was saying plagued her badly. After all, they only had Kiera’s word that she was building a fresh society for them.
One recording that promised she was different from the rest. “Gerald?” she asked after a while. “Who’s this Marie you want
to help?” “My daughter.”

“Oh. I see. Well how do you know she’s at Valisk?” “Because she’s the one Kiera’s possessing.” Rocio Condra parted his beak
in what passed for a smile. The sensor in Skibbow’s cabin wasn’t the best, and his affinity link with its bitek processor
suffered annoying dropouts. But what had been said was plain enough.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he could use the knowledge, but it was the first sign of any possible chink in Kiera’s armour.
That was a start.

•  •  •

Stephanie could finally see the end of the red cloud cover. The heavy ceiling had been dropping closer to the ground for some
time now as the convoy drove unimpeded along the M6. Individual clumps and streamers churned against each other in a motion
reminiscent of waves crashing on rocks, bright slivers of pink and gold rippled among the distorted underbelly. They acted
like a conductor for a current of pure agitation. The will of the possessed was being thwarted, their shield against the sky
arrested by the Kingdom’s firebreak.

The cliff of white light sleeting down along the boisterous edge appeared almost solid. Certainly it took her eyes a while
to acclimatize, slowly resolving the grainy shadows which crouched at the end of the road.