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.”
“Come with us.”
He turned from the window, seeing his sister’s apprehensive expression, and smiled reassuringly. “Sure, kid, no problem.”
The galley was one compartment Rocio hadn’t tried to modify with his energistic imagination, leaving the contemporary metal and composite surfaces undisturbed. However, they’d plainly been pillaged by some passing barbarian army. A cascade of empty sachets were littering the floor, stuck in place by treacle-like liquids. Storage cabinet doors swung open, revealing empty spaces. The timer on an induction oven bleeped away relentlessly.