The Night's Dawn Trilogy (354 page)

Good, good.

“The Organization hasn’t got any real use for that kind of waster trash,” Kiera said as Hudson repeated his silent conversation.
“Dock here and disembark them. They’ll be dealt with appropriately.”

And what about us?
Rocio asked mildly.
What do the hellhawks do now?

“I’ll have you assigned to fleet support duties,” Kiera said impassively. “Capone is preparing another invasion. The hellhawks
are becoming essential to ensure viability.”

I don’t wish to fly combat duties any more, thank you. This starship is proving an excellent host for my soul, I have no intention
of endangering it, especially now that you have no reserve body for me to inherit
.

Kiera’s answering smile portrayed regret. It wasn’t an emotion Hudson relayed via affinity, keeping the exchange scrupulously
neutral.

“I’m afraid we’re effectively on a war footing,” Kiera said. “Which means, that wasn’t a request.”

Are you trying to order me?

“I’m offering you one simple choice. You do as I tell you, or you fuck off back to the Edenists right now. You know why that
is? Because we’re the only two who can feed you. I am now in full command of the only possessed-owned nutrient supply in this
star system. Me, not Capone and the Organization, me. If you want to prevent that excellent host of yours from expiring from
malnutrition, you do exactly what I ask, and in return you’ll be permitted to dock and ingest as much of that goo as you can
hold. No one else can provide you with that, non-possessed asteroids will blow you away with their SD platforms before you
get within a hundred kilometres. Only the Edenists can supply you. And they’ve got their price, too, as I’m sure they’ve told
you. If you cooperate with them, it’ll be to help understand the nature of the interface with the beyond. They’ll find out
how to banish us. You and I will both be zapped back into that infernal oblivion. So decide, Rocio; where your loyalty lies,
who you’re going to fly for. I’m not asking for you and me to be friends, I want to know if you’ll obey, that’s all. And you
will tell me now.”

Rocio opened his affinity to converse with the other hell-hawks.
Is this what she holds over us?

Yes,
they answered.
There is no third alternative that we can see.

This is monstrous. I’m happy with this form. I don’t want to risk it in Capone’s egotistical conquests.

Then protect it, you pitiful bastard,
Etchells said.
Stop whining and fight for what you believe in. Some of you are so pathetic, you don’t deserve what you’ve got
.

Rocio remembered Etchells, always eager to intercept the voidhawks observing Valisk. When Capone had first approached Kiera
for help, he’d been excited and anxious to become involved in the conflict.

Piss off, you fascist bigot.

A coward, and a way with words,
Etchells retorted.
No wonder you’re so insecure.

Rocio closed his affinity with the offensive hellhawk.
I’ll dock at Monterey and offload the passengers,
he told Hudson and Kiera.
What kind of fleet support are you proposing?

Kiera’s smile lacked grace. “While the fleet is here, all hellhawks are on a rota to interdict the spy globes and stealthed
bombs. The voidhawks have just about given up that nonsense, but they’re still probing our defences, so we have to remain
vigilant. Apart from that, there’s also some communication duties, VIP flights and collecting cargo from asteroids. Nothing
too demanding.”

And when Capone finds a new planet to invade?

“You fly escort for the fleet, and then you help them eliminate the target world’s Strategic Defence network.”

Very well. I will be docking in another eight minutes, please have a pedestal ready to receive me.
Rocio abandoned Hudson Proctor’s mind, and analysed what had been said. The situation was almost what he’d been expecting.
Controlling the supply of nutrient fluid was the only practical way of binding the hellhawks to the Organization. What he
hadn’t predicted was Kiera still being in charge. She’d obviously come to the same conclusion about coercion.

A few queries to a couple of friendlier hellhawks, and he found that Etchells had visited most of the asteroid settlements
in the New California system, blasting their nutrient production machinery. Kiera had ordered the flight, and Hudson had been
on board to make sure everything ran smoothly. Kiera and the Organization were still separate. She was using her control over
the hellhawks to maintain her status as a power player. Scheming little bitch. And it would be the hellhawks who paid for
that status.

Rocio’s ersatz beak parted slightly. Even though he couldn’t manage a modestly contented smile any more, the intent was there.
Forced obedience always generated discontent. Allies wouldn’t be hard to find. He abandoned his favoured bird-image just as
he slipped round Monterey’s counter-rotating spaceport. The
Mindori
settled its hull on one of the docking ledge pedestals, and gratefully received the hose nozzles probing its underbelly.
Muscle membranes contracted round the seal rings, and the thick nutrient fluid pulsed its way up into the nearly-depleted
reserve bladders. The whole process served to emphasise just how vulnerable the giant bitek starship was. After such a long
flight, Rocio was enduring a strong subconscious pressure to ingest again, and he had absolutely no control over the substance
pumped along the pipes. Kiera could be giving him anything, from water to an elaborate poison. It tasted fine, to his limited
internal sense and filter glands, but he could never be quite sure. His plight was intolerable. So what? he asked himself,
bitterly. Blackmail always was.

The rebellion began at once. Rocio ordered his bitek processor array to open a channel into the asteroid’s communication network.
Access to any defence-critical system was denied; the Organization had protected its electronic architecture as thoroughly
as the New California defence force it had usurped. However, that left a lot of civil memory cores and sensors to access.
He began to analyse what information he was permitted, and hooked in to various cameras to look round.

A large bus trundled over the rock ledge, its flaccid elephant-trunk airlock tube snuggling up to the
Mindori
’s life support section. Inside the hellhawk, the Deadnight kids raced through their cabins, snatching up their bags. A long,
agitated queue formed outside the main airlock hatch. Choi-Ho and Maxim Payne stood at the end, smiling placidly.

When the hatch swung open amid a hiss of white vapour, the kids let out a collective gasp of delight. Kiera herself was waiting
for them. Gorgeous body clad in a small scarlet dress, hair tumbling over her honey-coloured shoulders. And that mesmerising
smile every bit as bright in real life as it was in the recording. They filed past her in a numb daze, eyes wide with awe
as she said hello to each and every one of them. All she got was a few mumbled words in return.

“That was easy enough,” she said to Choi-Ho and Maxim at the end. “We had a couple of flights end in riots when they realized
they weren’t at Valisk. For no-hopers, they can be vicious little shits. There was a lot of damage, and it’s hard getting
replacement components for these life support modules.”

“So what do we do now?” Maxim asked.

“I always need good officers. Or you can join the Organization if you like. Capone is keen to recruit soldiers to enforce
his rule down on the planet. You’ll be on the cutting edge of his empire,” she said sweetly.

“I’m good at what I do now,” Choi-Ho said levelly. Maxim quickly agreed.

Kiera observed their minds. There was a tang of resentment, of course, there always was. But they’d capitulated. “All right,
you’re in. Now let’s get these loser brats into the asteroid. They won’t be suspicious if we stay with them.”

She was right. Her presence alone was enough to fool the besotted Deadnights, none of them ever questioning why the bus windows
were blanked out. It wasn’t until they walked through the next set of airlocks that suspicions started to bubble up. They
were all from asteroid settlements, and the equipment here was very similar to what they thought they’d left behind. Habitats
were supposed to be different, devoid of this many mechanical contrivances. With the elder ones slightly puzzled now, they
trooped into the main arrivals hall. The Organization gangsters were waiting. It only took two acts of violence against the
bravest rebels to quell any further resistance. They were quickly segregated and classified according to the charts Leroy
and Emmet had provided.

Amid a welter of tearful and frightened crying, individuals were hauled off into the corridors. As the Organization was still
very male dominated, the older boys were all taken down to Patricia Mangano and imminent possession by new soldiers. With
them went the less attractive girls. Prettier girls were dispatched to the brothel where they would service the Organization’s
soldiers and non-possessed followers. The children (and definition was difficult, puberty plus a couple of years appeared
to be the deciding factor) were flown down to the planet, where Leroy paraded them in front of the rover reporters, claiming
their salvation from Deadnight as more humanitarian charity on Al’s behalf. The distorted image of a weeping seventeen-year-old
girl being shoved along by a machine-gun toting gangster in a brown pinstripe suit vanished from the processor block’s screen
in a hail of static.

“I can’t find any further working cameras in that section,” Rocio announced. “Would you like me to return to the arrivals
hall?”

Jed had to work hard against his tightening throat muscles. “No. That’s enough.” When the hellhawk possessor had shown them
the first pictures snatched from cameras, Jed had wanted to scramble out of their cramped refuge. Kiera was actually on board!
A mere thirty metres away from him. He’d suddenly wondered what the hell he was doing, crouched painfully between cold, condensation-smeared
tanks with loops of grimy cable wiping his forehead. The sight of her brought back all the old rapture. And she was smiling.
Kiera would make the angels envious of her beauty and compassion.

Then he heard bonkers Gerald reciting: “Monster, monster, monster, monster,” like it was some kind of freaky spell.

Beth was rubbing the old fart’s arm, all full of sympathy, saying, “It’s okay, you’ll get her back, you will.”

Jed wanted to shout out how barmy the pair of them were. But by then the last of the Deadnights were in the bus, and Kiera’s
smile was gone. In its place was a hideously alien expression of contempt verging on cruelty. The words which came from her
lips were cold and harsh. Rocio had been telling the truth.

Despite the evidence, that lost part of Jed’s heart had wanted to believe in his divine saviour and her promises of a better
world. Now he knew that was gone. Worse than that, it had never existed. Even Digger had been right. Bloody Digger, for Christ’s
sake! He was just a dumb stupid waster kid trying to score the ultimate escape trip from Koblat. If Beth and the girls hadn’t
been in there with him, he knew he would have burst into tears. For Jed, not even the scenes in the arrivals hall were as
horrific as that final moment when Kiera’s smile vanished.

By the time Rocio Condra’s face reappeared on the block, the girls were sniffling quietly, arms around each other. Beth made
no attempt to hide the tears meandering down her cheeks. Gerald had shrunk back into his usual uncommunicative self.

“I’m sorry,” Rocio said. “But I did suspect that something like this was going to happen. If it’s of any comfort, I am in
a similar position.”

“Similar?” Beth grunted. “Comfort? I knew some of those girls, damn you. How can you compare what they’re going to go through
with what you’ve got to do? That’s not patronising, that’s sickening.”

“They are being forced to prostitute themselves with men in order to survive. I have to risk my life and that of my host in
hostile combat conditions if I wish to continue my existence in this universe. Yes, I have to say there is similarity, whether
you see it or not.”

Beth glared at the processor block through her misery. She’d never felt so low before, not even when those men had grabbed
her that time when she met Gerald.

“So now what?” Jed asked dolefully.

“I’m not certain,” Rocio answered. “Obviously, we must find a new source of nutrient fluid for myself and those hellhawks
that share my beliefs. I shall have to gather a lot more information before that option opens itself.”

“Do we have to stay in here the whole time?”

“No, of course not. There is no one inside the life support section, you may come out now.”

It took a hot, aggravating five minutes to wriggle free from the confines of the cramped under-floor service ducts. Jed was
the first to extricate himself from the hatch in the washroom floor. He quickly helped the others free. They wandered out
into the central corridor, glancing about anxiously, not quite believing Rocio when he said they were alone.

They stood in the big forward lounge, looking out of the long window at the docking ledge. The row of pedestals stretched
away, gradually curving above them, silver mushrooms sprouting from the grizzled rock, each one bathed in a pool of yellow
light. But for three other docked hellhawks suckling their nutrient fluid from the hoses, it could have been a post-industrial
wasteland. Some technicians were working on the cargo cradles of one craft, but apart from that, nothing moved.

“So we just wait,” Beth said, flopping down into a settee.

Jed pressed his nose to the transparency, trying to see the rock wall at the back of the ledge. “Guess so.”

“I’m hungry,” Gari complained. “Then go eat,” Jed said. “I’m not going to stop you.”