“You may proceed to docking, Captain Calvert,” Admiral Saldana datavised. “Lieutenant Grese informs me we are now in full command of the station. There is enough antimatter in storage for your requirements.”

“Thank you, sir,” Joshua replied. He triggered the fusion drives. The simple course over to the station had been plotted for hours. Accelerate, flip, and decelerate. They were already inside the station’s umbra and commencing final rendezvous manoeuvres when the Organization’s convoy arrived.

“Eleven of them, sir,” Lieutenant Rhoecus said. “Confirmed emergence twenty-three million miles out from the star, eighty-nine million miles from the station.”

“Threat assessment?” the admiral enquired. How typical, he thought, that something should come along to thwart the squadron’s mission once again.

“Minimal.” The Edenist liaison officer appeared almost happy. “Ilex and Oenone report there are five hellhawks and six frigates in the enemy formation. Their hellhawks can’t swallow down to us, not at this altitude. And even if we assume the frigates are armed with antimatter combat wasps, they would take hours to reach us accelerating continually. I’ve never heard of a combat wasp that has an hour’s fuel in it.”

“They’d have to be custom built,” Grese said. “Which is unlikely for Capone. And even if they do exist, we can evade them easily at this distance.”

“Then Calvert can carry on?” the admiral asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Kroeber, inform the Lady Macbeth to proceed as planned. I’d appreciate it if the good captain didn’t dawdle.”

“Aye, sir.”

Meredith reviewed the tactical display. The Oenone was barely five million kilometres from the cluster of Organization ships. “Lieutenant Rhoecus, voidhawks to group together twenty-five million kilometres directly above the antimatter station. I don’t want them isolated, it might give the hellhawks ideas. Commander Kroeber, move the rest of the squadron up to rendezvous with the voidhawks, the frigates in high inclination orbits to meet us there. Two of our frigates to remain with the station until Lady Macbeth has completed her fuelling. Once they’re at a safe distance, the station is to be destroyed.”

“Aye, sir.”

Meredith instructed the tactical computer to compile options. The resulting assessment just about matched his own opinion. The two sides were evenly matched. He had more ships, but the Organization was expected to be armed with antimatter combat wasps. And if he did order the squadron up to intercept, it would take hours to reach them. The Organization ships could simply jump away, leaving only the voidhawks to pursue them—who would then be outgunned.

Effectively, it was a stand-off. Neither side could do much to affect the other.

Yet I cannot allow them to go unchallenged, Meredith thought, it sets a bad precedent. “Lieutenant Grese? What do we know about the non-possessed crews on board Organization ships? Just how much of a hold does Capone have on them?”

“According to the debriefings we’ve conducted; they all have family being held captive on Monterey. Capone is very careful about who is given command authority over antimatter. So far it’s a strategy that’s worked for him. A number of crews on ordinary Organization starships have managed to eliminate their possessed officers and desert. But we’ve never had any indication of attempted mutiny on ships equipped with antimatter.”

“Pity,” Meredith grunted as the Arikara started to accelerate up to the rendezvous with the voidhawks. “Nevertheless, I’ll issue them with the same ultimatum as the station was given. Who knows, the opportunity to capitulate might be enough to spark a small rebellion.”

Etchells listened to the admiral’s message as it was beamed out to the convoy. Slippery, vague promises of pardons and safe passage. None of it was relevant to him.

We repeat Edenism’s offer to you,the voidhawks added. You may transfer your host’s personality over to us, and we will provide your nutrient fluid. All we ask in return is your help in finding a satisfactory resolution.

Don’t any of you bastards even answer,etchells warned his fellow hellhawks. They’re running scared. They wouldn’t make that kind of offer unless they were absolutely desperate.

He could sense the uncertainty rumbling through their affinity bond. But none of them were brave enough to challenge him directly. Satisfied he’d kept them in line for now, Etchells asked the convoy’s commander what he intended to do. Withdraw, came the answer, there’s nothing else we can do.

Etchells wasn’t so sure. The Navy hadn’t destroyed the station. And that went against everything the Confederation stood for. There had to be a phenomenal reason for such a change of policy. We should stay, he told the convoy commander. They cannot engage us for hours yet. That gives us a chance to discover what they are doing here. If they’re going to start using antimatter against us, Capone should be told. Reluctantly, the commander agreed. However, he did order the Adamist ships to accelerate towards a new jump coordinate that would take them back to New California, leaving the hellhawks to observe the station.

It was difficult to look directly into that dangerous glare. Etchells’s sensor blisters began to suffer from glare spots, similar to purple after-images which plagued human eyes. He started to roll lazily, flicking his ebony wingtips to bank against the gusts of solar particles, switching the view between the blisters. Even then, concentrating on that tiny speck millions of kilometres away was inordinately stressful. A headache began to pound away inside his stolen neurone structure.

None of the electronic sensors loaded into his cargo cradles were any use, they were mostly military systems, intended for close defence work. And his distortion field couldn’t reach that far. The visual spectrum provided him with the greatest coverage. He could see the Navy’s Adamist ships accelerating up out of the star’s enormous gravity field, little sparks of light, actually brighter than the photosphere.

After half an hour, three more fusion drives ignited around the station. Two of them started to follow the Navy squadron. The last one took a different course altogether; curving round the star’s southern hemisphere on a very high inclination trajectory.

Etchells opened his beak wide to let out an imaginary warble of success. Whatever it was doing, the lone starship had to be the reason behind the Navy’s strange action. He issued a flurry of instructions to the other hellhawks. Despite his brute-boy attitude, Etchells had actually absorbed a great deal of information from his host’s mentality. The facade of toughness was a deliberate ploy—always let your opponents believe you’re dumber than you are. Becoming Kiera’s most dependable and trusted hellhawk made sure she wouldn’t risk him on those mad seeding flights, or any other dangerous actions. Convoy escort was about the safest duty to pull.

Wasted decades spent bumming round pointless mercenary actions across the Confederation, had taught him to disguise his true potential. Survival was dependent on intelligence and the lowest cunning, not worthy courage. And he knew for sure that surviving his current situation was going to take a great deal of ingenuity. Like Rocio in the Mindori , he had come to admire his new bitek form, finding it utterly superior to a human body. Quite how he could hang on to it was a question he’d been unable to resolve. There would be no place for hellhawks in the place where possessed took their planets to escape the universe, he was sure. And the Confederation would never rest until they’d solved the problem of how to evict souls back into the beyond permanently.