The Night's Dawn Trilogy (450 page)

He thought Gerald was about to start crying, the bloke looked so wretched. To cover his own guilt, Jed went back to loading
the boxes. When he had as many as the trolley could handle, he said: “I’m going to get rid of this bundle. Do me a favour,
mate, start loading the next lot.”

Gerald nodded. Even though he wasn’t convinced, Jed hurried out back to the airlock. When he got back, Gerald had put two
boxes on the second trolley.

“Ignore him,” Rocio said. “Just do it yourself.”

It took a further three trips to carry all the boxes to the airlock. Jed finished loading the trolley for the last time, and
paused. “Gerald, mate, look, you’ve got to get a grip, okay?”

“Leave him,” Rocio said curtly.

“He’s gone,” Jed said sadly. “Total brainwipe this time. That corpse did for him. We can’t leave him here.”

“I will not permit him back on board. You know what a danger he has become. We cannot treat him.”

“You think this gang are going to help him?”

“Jed, he did not come here looking for their help. Don’t forget he has a homemade bomb strapped to his waist. If Capone does
become unpleasant with Gerald, he’s going to be in for a nasty surprise himself. Now get back to the airlock. Beth and your
sister are the people you should be concentrating on now.”

More than anything, Jed wanted another dose out of the suit’s medical kit. Something to take away the hurt of abandoning the
crazy old man. “I’m real sorry, mate. I hope you find Marie. I wish she wasn’t, well… what she is now. She gave a lot of us
hope, you know. I guess I owe both of you.”

“Jed, leave now,” Rocio ordered.

“Screw you.” Jed steered the trolley at the wide door. “Good luck,” he called back.

He forced himself not to go fast on the drive back to the
Mindori
. There was too much at stake now to risk drawing attention to himself by a last minute error. So he resisted twisting the
throttle as he passed the fateful airlock with the corpse behind it. Rocio said the net in that section had returned to full
operation and the corridor’s emergency doors had opened, but no one had found the body yet.

Jed drove under the big hellhawk and parked directly below one of its barnacle-like cargo holds. Rocio opened the clamshell
doors, and Jed set about transferring the boxes over onto the loading platform which telescoped down. At the back of his mind
he knew that when the last box was on board, then he and Beth and the kids were no longer necessary. And probably a liability
to boot.

He was quite surprised to be allowed back up the ladder into
Mindori
’s airlock. Shame finally overwhelmed him when he took his helmet off. Beth was standing in front of him, ready to help with
his suit; face composed so she didn’t show any weakness. The enormity of everything he’d done snatched the strength from his
legs. He slid down the bulkhead, and burst into tears.

Beth’s arms went round him. “You couldn’t help him,” she crooned. “You couldn’t.”

“I never tried. I just left him there.”

“He couldn’t come back on board. Not now. He was going to blow us up.”

“He didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He’s mad.”

“Not really. Just very sick. But he’s where he wanted to be, near Marie.”

______

Jack McGovern drifted back into consciousness aware of a sharp, deep stinging coming from his nose. His eyes fluttered open
to see dark-brown wood crushed against his cheek. He was lying on floorboards in near darkness in the most uncomfortable position
possible, with his legs bent so his feet were pressing into his arse and his arms twisted behind his back. Blood was pounding
painfully in his forearms. His hangover was the greatest yet. When he tried to stir, he couldn’t. His wrists and ankles were
all bound up together by what felt like a ball of red hot insulating tape. An attempt to groan revealed his mouth was also
covered with tape. One nostril was clogged with dry blood.

That frightened him badly, sending pulse and breathing wild. Air hissed and thrummed through his one small vulnerable air
passage. It was like reinforcement feedback, making him even more aware of how dependant he was. Attempting to hyperventilate
and half-suffocating because of it made his head pound worse than ever. His vision vanished under a red sparkle.

Insensate panic dragged on for an indeterminable time. All he knew was that when his sight finally returned along with his
sluggish thoughts, his breathing was slowing. His attempted thrashing had shifted him several centimetres across the floorboards.
He calmed a lot then, still wishing his hangover would fuck off and leave him alone. The memory of what had happened in the
Black Bull’s toilet trickled back into his mind. He found that the tape across his mouth didn’t stop him from whimpering at
the back of his throat.

A possessed! He’d been mugged by a possessed. Yet… he wasn’t possessed himself, which is what they always did to people—everyone
knew that. Unless this was the beyond?

Jack managed to roll round onto his side and take a look round. Definitely not the beyond. He was in some kind of ancient
cube of a room, a half-moon window set high up on one wall. Old store display placards were stacked opposite him, fading holophorescent
print advertising brands of bathroom accessories he could dimly remember from his childhood. A heavy chain led from his ankles
to a set of metal pipes that ran straight up from the floor to the ceiling.

He shuffled along the floor for all of half a metre, until the chain was tight. Nothing he did after that even scratched the
pipes, let alone weakened them or made them bend away from the wall. He was still three metres from the door. Bracing and
clenching his arm and shoulder muscles had the solitary effect of making his wrists hurt more. That was it then. No escape.

His hangover had long abated when the door finally opened. He didn’t know when; only that hours and hours had passed. Cold
arcology night light slithered in through the high window, painting the bare plaster walls a grubby sodium yellow. It was
the possessed man who came in first, moving without sound, his black monk robe swirling round him like orderly mist. Two others
followed him in, a young teenage girl and a sulky, adolescent boy. They were hauling a woman along between them; middle-aged,
her shoulders slumped in defeat. Her chestnut hair was arranged in a pleated crown, as if she’d put it up ready for a shower;
wisps had escaped to dangle in front of her eyes. It hid most of her face, though Jack could make out the broken, lonely expression.

The boy bent down and yanked the tape over Jack’s mouth as hard as he could. Jack grunted at the pulse of pain as it ripped
free. He gulped down air.

“Please,” he panted. “Please don’t torture me. I’ll surrender, okay. Just fucking don’t.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Quinn said. “I want you to help me.”

“I’m yours. Hundred per cent! Anything.”

“How old are you Jack?”

“Hu… uh, twenty-eight.”

“I’d have put you older, myself. But that’s fine. And you’re about the right height.”

“What for?”

“Well, see, Jack, you got lucky. We’re gonna smarten you up a bit, give you a makeover. You’re gonna be a whole new man by
the time we’re finished. And I won’t even charge you for it. How about that?”

“You mean different clothes and stuff?” Jack asked cautiously.

“Not exactly. You see, I found out that Greta here is a fully qualified nurse. Course, some assholes would call that synchronicity.
But you and I know that’s total bullshit, don’t we Jack.”

Jack grinned round wildly. “Yeah! Absolutely. No fucking way.”

“Right. It’s all part of His plan. God’s Brother makes sure everything comes together for me. I am the chosen one, after all.
Both of you are His gifts to me.”

“You tell him, Quinn,” Courtney said.

Jack’s grin had been frozen into place by the aching realization of how deep into their shared insanity he’d fallen. “A nurse?”

“Yep.” Quinn signalled Greta forwards.

Jack saw she held a medical nanonic package. “Oh Jesus fuck, what are you going to do?”

“Hey, asshole, Jesus is dead,” Courtney shouted. “Don’t you go calling his name around us, he can’t help you. He’s the false
lord. Quinn is Earth’s new messiah.”

“Help me!” Jack yelled. “Somebody help.”

“Mouthy little turd, ain’t he,” Billy-Joe said. “Ain’t no body gonna hear you, boy. They didn’t hear any of the others, and
Quinn hurt them a fuck of a lot more.”

“Look, I said I’d help you,” Jack said desperately. “I will. Really. I’m not bullshitting. But you gotta keep your end of
the bargain. You said no torture.”

Quinn walked back to the door, putting as much distance as he could between himself and Jack in the small room. “Is it working
now?” he asked Greta.

She looked at the small display on her processor block. “Yes.”

“Okay. Start by getting rid of his vocal cords. Billy-Joe’s right, he talks too much. And I need him to be quiet when I use
him. That’s important.”

“No!” Jack yelled. He started to squirm round on the floor.

Billy-Joe laughed and sat down hard on his chest, forcing the air out of his lungs. It fluted weakly as it escaped through
his nostril.

“The package can’t remove his vocal cords,” Greta said in a disinterested monotone. “I’ll have to disengage the nerves.”

“Fine,” Quinn said. “Whatever.”

Jack stared right at her as she leaned over and applied the glossy green package to his throat. Direct eye to eye contact,
the most personal human communication there was. Pleading, imploring.
Don’t do this
. He could have been looking into a mechanoid’s sensor lens for the effect it had on her. The package adhered to his skin,
soft and warm. He clenched his throat muscles against the invasion. But after a minute or so they began to relax as he lost
all feeling between his jaw and his shoulders.

Silencing him was just the beginning. He was left alone as the package did its work, then the four of them returned. This
time Greta was carrying a different type of nanonic package, a face-mask with several sac-like blisters on the outer surface,
inflated by some glutinous fluid. There were no slits for him to see out through when she placed it over his face.

That was when the routine started. Every few hours they would return and remove the mask. Greta would refill the sacs. His
face would be examined, and Quinn would issue a few instructions before the mask was replaced. Occasionally they’d give him
cold soup and a cup of water.

He was left alone in a darkness that was frightening in its totality. His face was numbed by the package, and whatever it
was doing prevented even the red blotches that usually appeared behind closed eyelids. That just left him with hearing. He
learned how to tell the difference between night and day. The half-moon window let in a variety of sounds, mostly traffic
flowing along the big elevated motorway running down the middle of the Thames. There was also the sound of boats, swans and
ducks squabbling. He began to get a feel for the building, too. Big and old, he was sure of that; the floorboards and pipes
conducted faint vibrations. In the day there was some activity. Whirring sounds that must be lifts, clumping as heavy objects
were moved around. None of it close to his room.

At night there was screaming. A woman, starting with a pitiful wail which was eventually reduced to miserable sobbing. Each
time the same, and not far away. It took a while for him to realize it was Greta. Obviously, there were worse things than
having your features modified by a nanonics package. The knowledge didn’t act as much of a comfort.

______

The ghosts knew the Orgathé were approaching Valisk’s northern endcap, their new awareness perceiving black knots of menacing
hunger sliding through the air. It was enough to overcome their apprehension towards the humans that hated them, sending them
fleeing into the caverns harbouring their ex-hosts.

Their presence was one more complication for the defenders. Although the personality could watch the Orgathé flying along
the habitat, it certainly didn’t know where they’d land. That left Erentz and her relatives with the entire circumference
to guard. They’d already decided that it would be impossible to move the thousands of sick and emaciated humans from the front
line of the outer caverns. Flight time down the length of the habitat was barely fifteen minutes, and the Orgathé emerging
from the southern end cap were joined by several new arrivals who had just entered through the starscrapers. There simply
wasn’t time to prepare, all they could do was snatch up their weapons and assemble in teams ready to respond to the nearest
incursion; even the way they were spaced round the endcap was less than ideal.

Wait until they get inside,
the personality said.
If you fire while they’re still in the air, they’ll just swoop away. Once they’re in the caverns they can’t escape.

The Orgathé hesitated as they glided down towards the scrub desert, in turn sensing the hatred and fear of the entities below.
For several minutes they circled above the cavern entrances as the last ghosts fled inside, then the flock descended.

Thirty-eight of the buggers. Stand by.

Tolton shifted his grip on the incendiary torpedo launcher as Erentz told him to get ready. His sweat was making its casing
slippery. He was standing behind Dariat, who in turn was at the tail end of a group of his relatives waiting in a passage
at the back of one of the hospital caverns. What he thought of as his special status hadn’t exempted him from this brand of
lethal madness.

He heard a lot of groaning start up in the cavern. It quickly degenerated into weak screams and shouted curses. The ghosts
were flooding in, ignoring the bedridden humans to plunge deeper into the cavern network. They started to run past him, mouths
open to yell silent warnings. Their movements sketched short-lived smears of washed-out colour through the air.

Then one of the Orgathé hit the entrance outside. Its body elongated, the front section pressing forward eagerly through the
curving passageway, while the bulbous rear quarter squirmed violently, adding to its impetus. Those ghosts that had only just
made it inside were engulfed by writhing appendages as the huge creature surged along. Their savage cries of suffering penetrated
the entire endcap as their life-energy was torn away from them. The other ghosts and Dariat could actually hear them, while
the humans experienced their torment as a wave of profound unease. Tolton looked down at the launcher for reassurance, only
to find his hands were trembling badly.