It is fortunate that Kelly Tirrel did not wish to go with him,tranquillity said. You would have had to stop her, which would have raised the flight’s profile.
Sure.
He will remain safe, Ione. We are there with him to provide assistance, and even in part to die to protect him.
Right.
The Lady Macbeth ’s bright blue ion thrusters fired, washing out the bay’s floodlights. Ione used the Strategic Defence platforms to track the starship as it flew in towards Mirchusko. Joshua piloted her into a perfectly circular one-hundred-and-eighty-five-thousand-kilometre orbit, cutting off the triple fusion drives at the precise moment of injection. The ion thrusters only fired twice more to fine-tune the trajectory before the thermo dump panels started to fold up.
Tranquillity sensed the gravitonic pulse as the starship’s patterning nodes discharged. Then the tiny mote of mass was gone.
Ione turned back to her other problems.
Demaris Coligan thought he’d done okay with his suit, dreaming up a fawn-brown fabric with silvery pinstripes, and a neat cut that wasn’t half as garish as some of the Organization lieutenants wore.
At the last minute he added a small scarlet buttonhole rose to his lapel, then nodded to the oily Bernhard Allsop who led him into the Nixon suite.
Al Capone was waiting for him in the vast lounge; his suit wasn’t that different from Demaris’s, it was just that Al wore it with such verve. Not even the equally snappy senior lieutenants flanking him could produce the same style.
The sight of so many heavyweights didn’t do much to increase Demaris’s level of confidence. But there was nothing he’d done wrong, he was sure of that.
Al gave him a broad welcoming smile, and clasped his hand in a warm grip. “Good to see you, Demaris. The boys here tell me you’ve been doing some good work for me.”
“Do whatever I can, Al. And that’s a fact. You and the Organization’s been good to me.”
“Mighty glad to hear that, Demaris. Come over here, got something to show you.” Al draped his arm around Demaris’s shoulder in a companionable fashion, guiding him over to the transparent wall. “Now ain’t that a sight?”
Demaris looked out. New California itself was hidden behind the bulk of the asteroid, so he looked up. Crinkled sepia-coloured rock curved away to a blunt conical peak. Three kilometres away, hundreds of thermo dump panels the size of football fields hung down from the rock, forming a ruff collar right around the asteroid’s neck. Beyond that was the non-rotating spaceport disk, which, like the stars, seemed to be revolving. An unnervingly large constellation of Adamist starships floated in a rigorously maintained lattice formation just past the edge of the disk. Demaris had spent the entire previous week helping to prep them for flight; and the constellation only represented thirty percent of the Organization’s total warship fleet.
“It’s, er . . . pretty fine, Al,” Demaris said. He couldn’t make out Al’s thoughts too clearly, so he didn’t know whether he was in the shit or not. But the boss seemed pleased enough.
“Pretty fine!” Al appeared to find this hilarious, roaring with laughter. He slapped Demaris’s back enthusiastically. The other lieutenants smiled politely.
“It’s a fucking great ritzy miracle, Demaris. One hundred per cent proof. You know just one of those ships is packing enough firepower to blow the entire old U.S. Navy out of the water? Now that’s the kinda thought makes you shit bricks, huh?”
“Right, Al.”
“What you’re seeing out there is something no one else has ever tried before. It’s a fucking crusade, Demaris. We’re gonna save the universe for people like us, put it to rights again. And you helped make it happen. I’m mighty grateful to you for that, yes, sir. Mighty grateful.”
“Did what I could, Al. We all do.”
“Yeah, but you helped with getting those star-rockets ready. That takes talent.”
Demaris tapped the side of his head. “I possessed someone who knows; he don’t hold nothing back.” With great daring he gave a gentle punch to Al’s upper arm. “Least, not if he knows what’s good for him.”
A split-second pause, then Al was laughing again. “Goddamn right. Gotta let em know who’s calling the shots.” A finger was raised in caution. “But, I gotta admit; I got one hell of a problem brewing here, Demaris.”
“Well, Christ, Al, anything I can do to help, you know that.”
“Sure, Demaris, I know that. The thing is, once we start the crusade they’re gonna fight back, the Confederation guys. And they’re bigger than we are.”
Demaris dropped his voice an octave, glancing from side to side. “Well sure they are, Al; but we got the antimatter now.”
“Yeah, that’s right, we got that. But that don’t make them any smaller, not numbers wise.”
Demaris’s smile was a little harder to maintain. “I don’t see . . . What is it you want, Al?”
“This guy you’re possessing—what’s his name?”
“The goof calls himself Kingsley Pryor, he was a real hotshot engineer for the Confederation Navy, a lieutenant commander.”
“That’s right, Kingsley Pryor.” Al pointed a finger at Leroy Octavius.
“Lieutenant Commander Kingsley Pryor,” Leroy recited, glancing at the screen on his processor block. “Attended University of Columbus, and graduated 2590 with a degree in magnetic confinement physics. Joined Confederation Navy the same year, graduated from Trafalgar’s officer cadet campus with a first. Took a doctorate in fusion engineering at Montgomery Tech in 2598. Assigned to 2nd Fleet headquarters engineering division. Rapid promotion. Currently working on the navy’s project to reduce fusion rocket size. Married, with one son.”
“Yeah,” Demaris said cagily. “That’s him. So?”
“So I got a job for him, Demaris,” Al said. “A special job, see? I’m real sorry about that, but I can’t see no way out of it.”
“No need to be sorry, Al. Like I said, anything I can do.”
Al scratched the side of his cheek, just above three thin white scars. “No, Demaris, you ain’t listening. I fucking hate it when people do that. I got a job for him to do. Not you.”
“Him? You mean Pryor?”
Al gave the ever-impassive Mickey a helpless grimace. “Je-zus, I’m dealing with fucking Einstein here. YES, shit-for-brains. Kingsley Pryor, I want him back. Now.”
“But, but, Al, I can’t give you him. I am him.” Demaris thumped his chest frantically with both hands. “I ain’t got anybody else to ride around in. You can’t ask me to do that.”
Al frowned. “Are you loyal to me, Demaris, are you loyal to the Organization?”
“What kind of a fucking question is that? Course I’m fucking loyal, Al. But it still don’t mean you can ask that. You can’t!” He whirled around as he heard the smooth snik of a Thompson being cocked. Luigi Balsmao was cradling one of the machine guns lightly, an affable smile on his thickset face.
“I am asking you, as a loyal member of my Organization, to give me back Kingsley Pryor. I’m asking you nicely .”
“No. No fucking way, man!”
The scars on Al’s reddening face were frost-white. “Because you acted loyal to me I give you the choice. Because we’re gonna liberate every one of those ass-backwards planets out there, you’re gonna have a zillion decent bodies to choose from. Because of this, I give you the opportunity to avoid zero-tau and prove your honour like a man. Now for the last goddamn time, read my lips: I want Pryor.”
Kingsley Pryor didn’t even know why he was crying like a baby. Because he was free? Because he’d been possessed? Because death wasn’t final?
Whatever the reason, the emotional fallout was running through him like an electrical discharge. Control was impossible. However, he was fairly sure he was crying. Lying on cool silk sheets, a billowingly soft mattress below his spine. Knees hooked up under his chin with arms wrapped around his shins. And in darkness. Not the sensory deprivation of the mental imprisonment, but a wonderful genuine dusk, where a mosaic of grey on grey shadows delineated shapes. It was enough for a start. Had he been plunged directly into countryside on a sunny day he would probably have fried from sensory overload.