The Night's Dawn Trilogy (196 page)

“Yeah, that’s about it.”

“That means you’ll be nothing, least nothing special.”

“That’s what I’m fucking telling
you.”

Jezzibella shifted again. This time she was like nothing he’d seen before: a librarian or schoolmarm. Not the remotest bit
sexy. Al sucked some breath through his teeth, the way she did that was just plain unnerving—her not having the energistic
power, and all.

She leaned over and put a hand on each of his shoulders, stern eyes inches from his. “When you’re nothing, all your lieutenants
and soldiers become nothing, too. Deep down they’re not going to want that. You’ve got to find a reason—a fucking good reason—to
keep the Organization intact. Once they grab that angle you can keep things humming along sweetly for quite a while yet.”

“But we’ve won here. There isn’t a single excuse to keep going the way we have.”

“There are plenty,” she said. “You simply don’t know enough about the way the modern galaxy works to make any long-range plans,
that’s all. But I’m going to cure that, starting right here. Now listen closely.”

•  •  •

New California’s planetary government had always taken a progressive view on flinging tax dollars at the local defence establishment.
Firstly, it provided a healthy primer for industry to pursue an aggressive export policy, boosting foreign earnings. Secondly,
their navy’s above-average size gave them an excellent heavyweight political stature within the Confederation.

Such enthusiasm for defence hardware had resulted in a superb C3 (command, control, and communication) setup, the core of
which was Monterey’s naval tactical operations centre. It was a large chamber drilled deep into the asteroid’s rock, below
the first biosphere cavern, and equipped with state-of-the-art AIs and communications systems, linked in to equally impressive
squadrons of sensor satellites and weapons platforms. It was capable of coordinating the defence of the entire star system
against anything from a full-scale invasion to a sneak attack by a rogue antimatter-powered starship. Unfortunately, no one
had ever considered the consequences should it be captured and its firepower turned inwards on the planet and orbiting asteroids.

The Organization lieutenants had split into two fractions to run their operations centre. There was Avram Harwood’s staff
who dealt purely with the administration and management details of the Organization, essentially the new civil service. Then
there were those, a smaller number, working under the auspices of Silvano Richmann and Emmet Mordden, who were operating the
military hardware they’d captured. The law enforcers. Al’s laws. He’d given that task to the possessed alone, just in case
any non-possessed tried to be a hero.

When Al and Jezzibella walked into the centre the huge wall-mounted hologram screens were showing satellite views of Santa
Volta. Grizzled spires of smoke were rising from several of the city’s blocks. Graphic symbols were superimposed over the
real-time layout as the organization advanced its troops. Silvano Richmann and Leroy Octavius stood in front of the colourful
screens, heads together as they discussed the best strategy to crack open the population. Filling the eight rows of consoles
behind them, the communications team was waiting patiently.

Everyone turned as Al strode forward. There were grins, smiles, whoops, sharp whistles. He did the rounds, pressing the flesh,
joking, laughing, thanking, offering encouragement.

Jezzibella followed a pace behind him. She and Leroy quirked an eyebrow at each other.

“So how’s it going?” Al asked a scrum of his senior lieutenants when he’d finished his processional.

“We’re more or less sticking to the timetable,” Mickey Pileggi said. “Some places put up a fight. Others just roll onto their
backs and stick their legs in the air for us. We got no way of knowing in advance. Word’s getting out that we aren’t possessing
everyone. It helps. Causes a shitload of confusion.”

“Fine from my angle, too, Al,” Emmet Mordden said. “Our sensor satellites have been monitoring some of the deep space message
traffic. It’s not easy, because most of it is directional tight beam. But it looks like the rest of the system knows we’re
here, and what we’re doing.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” Al asked.

“No, sir. We caught nearly forty per cent of New California’s navy ships in dock when we took over the orbiting asteroids.
They’re still there, and another twenty per cent is on permanent assignment to the Confederation Navy fleets. That just leaves
a maximum of about fifty ships left in the system who could cause us any grief. But I’ve got every SD platform on situation-A
readiness. Even if the admirals out there get their act together, they know it would be suicide to attack us.”

Al lit a cigar, and blew a stream of smoke towards the screen. The near-orbit tactical display, Emmet had called it yesterday.
It looked pretty calm at the moment. “Sounds like you’re handling your slice of the action, Emmet. I’m impressed.”

“Thanks, Al.” The nervous man bobbed in appreciation. “As you can see, there’s no spacecraft activity within a million kilometres
of the planetary surface, except for five voidhawks. They’re holding themselves stable over the poles, seven hundred thousand
kilometres out. My guess is they’re just watching us to see what’s happening.”

“Spies?” Al inquired.

“Yes.”

“We should blow them all to shit,” Bernhard Allsop said loudly. “Ain’t that right, Al? That’ll give the rest of those frigging
Commie Edenists the message: Don’t spy on us, don’t fuck with us or it’s your ass.”

“Shut up,” Al said mildly.

Bernhard twitched apprehensively. “Sure, Al. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“Can you hit the voidhawks?” Jezzibella asked.

Emmet glanced from her to Al, and licked his suddenly sweaty lips. “It’s difficult, you know? They chose those polar positions
carefully. I mean, they’re out of range of our energy weapons. And if we launch a combat wasp salvo at them, they’ll just
dive down a wormhole. But, hey… they can’t hurt us, either.”

“Not this time,” Al said. He chewed his cigar from the left side of his mouth to the right. “But they can see what we’re about,
and it’ll frighten them. Pretty soon the whole goddamn Confederation is going to know what’s happened here.”

“I told you they’d be trouble, Al baby,” Jezzibella said, on cue. Her voice had shunted down to a tart’s whinny.

“Sure you did, doll,” he said, not taking his eyes off the tactical display. “We’re gonna have to do something about them,”
Al announced to the room at large.

“Well, hell, Al,” Emmet said. “I’ll give it a go, but I don’t think…”

“No, Emmet,” Al said generously. “I ain’t talking about five crappy little ships. I’m talking about what’s lining up behind
them.”

“The Edenists?” Bernhard asked, hopefully.

“Partly, yeah. But they ain’t the whole picture, are they, boy? You gotta think
big
, here. You’re in a big universe now.” He had their complete attention. Damn, but Jez had been right. Typical.

“The Edenists are gonna broadcast what we’ve done here to the whole Confederation. Then what do you think is gonna happen,
huh?” He turned a full circle, arms held out theatrically. “Any takers? No? Seems pretty goddamn obvious to me, guys. They’re
gonna come here with every fucking battleship they got, and grab the planet back off us.”

“We can fight,” Bernhard said.

“We’ll lose,” Al purred. “But that don’t matter. Does it? Because I know what you’re thinking. Every goddamned dumb-ass one
of you. You’re thinking: We won’t be here. We’re gonna be out of this stinking joint any day now, safe on the other side of
the red cloud where there ain’t no sky and there ain’t no space, and nobody dies anymore. Ain’t that right? Ain’t that what’s
brewing inside those thick skulls of yours?”

Shuffled feet and downcast eyes was the only response he was offered. “Mickey, ain’t that right?”

Mickey Pileggi developed an urgent wish to be somewhere else. He couldn’t meet his boss’s interrogatory stare. “Well, you
know how it is, Al. That’s a last resort, sure. But shit, we can do like Bernhard says and fight some first. I ain’t afraid
of fighting.”

“Sure you ain’t afraid. I didn’t say you were afraid. I didn’t insult you, Mickey, you rube goof. I’m saying you ain’t thinking
level. The Confederation Navy, they’re gonna turn up here with a thousand, ten thousand starships, and you’re gonna do the
smartest thing you can do, and hide. Right? I would if they came at me with all pieces shooting.”

The left side of Mickey’s face began to tic alarmingly. “Sure, boss,” he said numbly.

“So you think that’s gonna make them give up?” Al asked. “Come on, all of you. I want to know. Who in this room believes the
big government boys are just gonna give up if you make New California disappear? Huh? Tell me. They lose a planet with eight
hundred million people on it, and the admiral in charge, he’s just gonna shrug and say: Well fuck it, you can’t win them all.
And go home.” Al stabbed a finger at the little purple stars of light representing the voidhawks on the tactical display screen.
A slim bolt of white fire lashed out, striking the glass. Glowing droplets sprinkled out. A crater bowed inwards, distorting
and magnifying the graphics below. “Is he FUCK,” Al bellowed. “Open your goddamn eyes, shitheads! These people can fly among
the stars for Christ’s sake. They know everything there is to know about how energy works, they know all about quantum dimensions,
hell they can even switch off time if they feel like it. And what they don’t know, they can find out pretty fucking quick.
They’ll see what you’ve done, they’ll follow where you take the planet. And they’ll bring it back. Those cruddy longhairs
will look at what happened, and they’ll work on it, and they’ll work on it. And they ain’t never going to stop until they’ve
solved the problem. I know the feds, the governments. Believe me, of all people, I fucking know. You ain’t never safe from
them. They don’t ever fucking stop. Never! And it won’t matter diddly how much you scream, and how much you cuss and rage.
They’ll bring you back. Oh, yeah, right back here under the stars and emptiness where you started from. Staring death and
beyond in the face.” He had them now, he could see the doubt blossoming, the concern. And the fear. Always the fear. The way
right into a man’s heart. The way a general jerked his soldiers’ strings.

Al Capone grinned like the devil himself into the daunted silence. “There’s only one fucking way to stop that from ever happening.
Any of you cretins figured that out yet? No? Big surprise. Well, it’s simple, assholes. You stop running scared like you have
been all your life. You stop, you turn around to face what’s scaring you, and you bite its fucking dick off.”

•  •  •

For five centuries after the first successful ZTT jump, governments, universities, companies, and military laboratories throughout
the Confederation had been researching methods of direct supralight communication. And for all the billions of fuseodollars
poured into the various projects, no one had ever produced a valid theory let alone a practical system to surmount the problem.
Starships remained the only method of carrying data between star systems.

Because of this, waves of information would spread out like ripples through the inhabited star systems within the Confederation.
And as the stars were not arranged in a tidy geometrical lattice, such wavefronts became more and more distorted as time went
on. News companies had long since refined a set of equations defining the most effective distribution procedure between their
offices. On receiving a hot item (such as the appearance of Ione Saldana), an office would typically charter eight to twelve
starships to relay the flek depending on when and where the story originated. Towards the end of the distribution coverage,
the information could well arrive in one system from several directions over the course of a fortnight. The nature of the
starships employed also had a strong influence on the timing, depending on the marque of ship used, how good the captain was,
component malfunctions, a hundred diverse circumstances all contributing to the uncertainty.

Laton’s appearance had naturally received an overriding precedence from all the Time Universe offices receiving Graeme Nicholson’s
flek. But Srinagar was over four hundred light-years away from Tranquillity. News of the
Yaku’s
existence, and who it was carrying, arrived several days after the
Yaku
itself had departed from Valisk.

Laton!

Rubra was astonished. They might have been fellow Serpents, but that hardly made them allies. So for the first time in a hundred
and thirty years he expanded his affinity and grudgingly contacted the Edenist habitats orbiting Kohistan to tell them the
starship had docked briefly.

But Laton did not come inside,
he assured them.
Only three crew came through immigration: Marie Skibbow, Alicia Cochrane, and Manza Balyuzi.

Skibbow was definitely sequestrated, and the other two are likely recipients,
the Kohistan Consensus replied.
Where are they?

I don’t know.
It was a humiliating, dismaying admission, especially to make to his former peers. But Rubra had immediately made the connection
between Marie Skibbow and Anders Bospoort, in whose apartment Dariat’s corpse had been found. Such a chain of events worried
him enormously. But his supposedly infallible memory storage facility had failed him utterly. After Marie and Anders had gone
down the starscraper that first time they had simply vanished from his perception; and the sub-routine in the starscraper
hadn’t noticed their absence. Nor could he locate them now, not even with his perception sub-routines expanded and upgraded
with a new batch of safeguards.

Do you require our assistance?
the Kohistan Consensus asked.
Our neuropathologists may be able to analyse the nature of the distortion in your sub-routines.