The Night's Dawn Trilogy (467 page)

“Did the voidhawks kill it?”

“I never heard a death cry; neither did any of the other hellhawks. And ambushing our ships would be a big change of policy
for the Edenists.”

“Run an SD sensor check on the other patrol hellhawks, make sure they’re still with us.” Kiera let out a disgusted breath.
Another complication. She didn’t like to think about the hellhawks defecting to the Edenists. Their offers of refuge were
still pretty constant from what Hudson, Jull, and the other affinity-capable told her. The only other alternative—that Capone
had finally repaired a nutrient fluid refinery—was even worse.

A few metres in front of her, a non-possessed shambling along behind a trolley loaded with food suddenly veered across the
hall. Annoyed, she stepped sideways to avoid the wayward trolley. The man pushing it was a wreck, unshaven, his grey jump-suit
crumpled and dirty, oily hair smeared across his brow. A haggard face was screwed up in an expression of total anguish. She’d
paid him no attention, just like all the other non-possessed she encountered in Monterey, because his mind was a standard
jumble of misery and fear.

He opened his arms wide, and grabbed her in a fierce bear hug that turned into a rugby tackle. “Mine!” he howled. “You’re
mine.” They crashed painfully to the floor, Kiera’s knee cracking against the carbon-concrete. “Darling, baby, Marie, I’m
here. I’m here.”

“Daddy!” She didn’t say it. The voice came from within, rising irresistibly from Marie Skibbow’s imprisoned mind. Incredulity
poured through Kiera’s thoughts, smothering her own responses. Marie was sweeping back towards full control.

“I’m going to get her out of you, I promise,” Gerald shouted. “I know how. Loren told me.”

Hudson Proctor finally recovered from his shock, and leant over the squirming couple to grab Gerald’s sleeve. He pulled hard,
muscles reinforced by energistic strength, attempting to tear the deranged man free from Kiera. Gerald stabbed a small power
cell against Hudson’s hand, its naked electrodes digging deep. Hudson screamed as the excruciating bolt of electricity flowed
across his skin. He lurched back in terror and pain, a bud of flame sizzling bright from his hand. Two of the bodyguards pounced
on Gerald, trapping his legs and one arm. He bucked about frantically.

Kiera went skidding over the floor, barely aware of the disorderly scrum tumbling around her. Her limbs were starting to move
in the way which Marie commanded, as the girl’s thoughts expanded rapidly back along their old pathways. She concentrated
on fighting the girl’s re-emergence.

Gerald jabbed the power cell towards Marie’s face, the electrodes halting millimetres from her eyes. “Get out of her,” he
raged. “Out! Out! She’s mine. My baby!”

One of the bodyguards grabbed his wrist and twisted hard. Gerald’s bone shattered. The power cell dropped to the floor. Gerald
screamed in fury. He slammed his elbow back with berserker strength. It caught the bodyguard in his stomach, doubling him
up.

“Daddy!”

“Marie?” Gerald gasped, fearful with hope.

“Daddy.” Marie’s voice was dwindling. “Daddy, help.”

Gerald scrabbled round desperately for the power cell. His cold fingers closed around it. Hudson Proctor landed on his back,
and the two of them rolled over together.

“Marie!” He could see her beautiful face in front of him. Shaking like a dog coming out of deep water, hair fanning round.

“Not any more,” she snarled. Her fist smashed dead into Gerald’s nose.

Kiera slowly climbed to her feet, swaying slightly as long tremors clattered along her body. The bitch girl was back where
she belonged, weeping at the centre of her brain. One of the bodyguards was curled up on the floor, clutching his abdomen,
cheek resting in a small puddle of vomit. Hudson Proctor was hopping about, shaking his hand violently as if it was still
on fire. A deep pock of blackened flesh above his knuckles was trailing smoke, filling the air with a disgusting smell. His
eyes were shedding tears of pain. The remaining bodyguards were standing round Gerald, spoiling for trouble.

“I’m going to kill the bastard!” Hudson shouted. He kicked Gerald hard in the ribs.

“Enough,” Kiera said. She wiped a shaking hand across her forehead. Her tangle of hair stirred itself, straightening out and
flowing back to its usual dark glossy arrangement. She looked down at Gerald. He was groaning faintly, fingers pawing weakly
at his side where Hudson had kicked him. Blood was pumping out from his flattened nose. His thoughts and emotions were a discordant
nonsense. “How the fuck did he get here?” she grumbled.

“You know him?” Hudson asked in surprise.

“Oh yes. This is Marie Skibbow’s father. Last seen on Lalonde. Which was last seen departing this universe.”

Hudson gave an uncomfortable flinch. “You don’t think they’re coming back, do you?”

“No.” Kiera glanced along the hall. Three of Al’s gangsters had emerged from the Hilton’s lobby to look at what was going
on.

“We have to move. Get him up,” she told her bodyguards.

They grabbed Gerald under his shoulders and hauled him upright. His dazed eyes peered at Kiera. “Marie,” he pleaded.

“I don’t know how you got here, Gerald, but we’ll find that out eventually. You must really love your daughter to have attempted
this.”

“Marie, baby, Daddy’s here. Can you hear me? I’m here. Please, Marie.”

Kiera bent her bruised knee, wincing at the lick of pain which the movement brought. She focused her energistic power around
the joint, feeling it ease up. “Ordinarily, just working you over ready to receive a soul from the beyond would be punishment
enough. But after all you’ve done, you deserve better.” She smiled, leaning in closer. Her voice became husky. “You’re going
to be possessed, Gerald. And the lucky boy who wins your body is going to get me as well. I’m going to take him to bed, and
let him fuck me any way he wants, as much as he wants. And you’re going to feel it happening the whole time, Gerald. You’re
going to feel yourself fucking your darling daughter.”

“Noooo!” Gerald howled, shuddering in his captor’s grip. “No, you can’t. You can’t!”

Kiera slowly licked Gerald’s cheek, holding his head fast as he tried to squirm away. Her mouth arrived at his ear. “It won’t
be Marie’s first perversion, Gerald,” she whispered smoothly. “I enjoy how hot this body gets when I use it to perform my
deviancies. And I have a lot of them, as you’ll find out.”

Gerald began a tormented wailing; his knees buckled. “It hurts again,” he burbled. “My head hurts. I can’t see anything. Marie?
Where are you, Marie?”

“You’ll see her, Gerald, I promise I’ll open your eyes for you.” Kiera jerked her head at the bodyguards holding the wretched
madman. “Bring him.”

______

The office Emmet Mordden had claimed for himself was on the same corridor as the tactical operations centre. Its previous
occupant, the Admiral commanding New California’s SD network, had favoured striking colours for his furniture. The easy chairs
were purple, scarlet, lemon, and emerald, while his curving desk was a perfect mirror. A continual holographic screen formed
a narrow band circling the room half-way up the wall, showing a view out over a coral reef colonized by some xenoc species
of aquatic termites. Emmet didn’t mind, like all possessed he enjoyed the impact of strong colours, and found the ocean relaxing.
Besides, there was a very powerful desktop processor which allowed him to track down most of the problems he was given, and
he was close to the Organization’s communication centre when a crisis hit—like five times a day. The admiral also had an excellent
stash of booze.

When Al came in he gave the easy chairs a disapproving grunt. “I gotta sit in one of those? Je-zus, Emmet, don’t you tell
no one. I got an image around here.” Al sat in the one nearest the desk and rested his fedora on its wide arm. He took a longer
look round. Same as everywhere else in the asteroid. Trash piling up, food wrappers and cups, along with a pile of clothes
in one corner waiting for the laundry. If anyone should have room service sorted, he expected it to be Emmet. Bad sign that
he hadn’t. But the brain boy had been busy in other ways. His desk was covered in those electric calculation machines, all
stitched together with glass wire. Picture screens lined the edge of the desk, standing on things like sheet music racks;
the whole set up was hurried, just out of the workshop. “You been busy by the looks of things.”

“I have.” Emmet gave him a pensive look. “Al, I gotta tell you, I’ve wound up with more questions than when we started.”

“Figures.”

“First off, I checked the corridor cameras, and all the ones round about that area. They came to a big zero. I don’t know
who killed Bernhard, but they definitely messed with the camera processors. The memories were deleted, someone used a codebuster
against our protocols.”

“Emmet… come on, man, you know I don’t grab any of that shit.”

“Sorry, Al. Okay, it’s like the photos the cameras take are automatically locked inside a safe. Well, somebody cracked it,
took the photos out, then locked it up again behind them.”

“Shit. So no pictures, huh?”

“Not in the corridor, no. So I widened the search and hunted through the cameras outside, the ones covering the ledge.” He
tapped one of the makeshift screens. “Watch.”

A picture of the docking ledge sprang up. They were looking down on the airlock as it jetted air out to the stars. Two spacesuited
figures stood watching it. One of them started bounding towards the open hatch. After a short interval, the other one followed
him.

“Nothing happens for a couple of minutes,” Emmet said.

The image zipped with static, then the two spacesuits emerged from the airlock and carried on walking down the ledge.

“The footprint guys?” Al suggested.

“I think so. But I don’t think they’re part of Bernhard’s hit.”

“Sure they are. They didn’t holler about what happened.”

“They’re in spacesuits, so they’re not possessed. Look at it from their angle. They’ve just stumbled over the newly dead corpse
of one of your senior lieutenants, and they’ve even got his blood on their boots. There’s no one else around they can point
the finger at. What would you do?”

“Keep my mouth shut,” Al agreed. “Do you know who they are?”

“This is where it gets odd. I backtracked them; they came out of a hellhawk called
Mindori
.”

“Goddamn! Kiera’s people.”

“I don’t think so.” The camera memory played on, showing the two spacesuited figures getting into a small truck and driving
it round to another airlock. “I couldn’t get a record off the cameras in this section either. So I don’t know what they got
up to inside. But it was a different program which erased their memories, not the same one used in Bernhard’s hit.” One of
the spacesuited figures re-emerged onto the docking ledge and loaded several trays of small packages onto the truck. It was
then driven back to the
Mindori
. The figure eventually climbed back up into the hellhawk’s life support module.

“Kiera doesn’t use non-possessed to crew her hellhawks,” Emmet said. “And that guy was still on board when it took off. The
other one must still be inside the habitat.”

“Je-zus. He’s walking around in here?”

“Looks that way. All we know for sure is that they’re nothing to do with Kiera.”

“But he could be the goddamn Confederation Navy. Some kind of assassin. Their version of Kingsley Pryor.”

“I’m not so sure, Al. Those boxes in the truck. I ran a search through our store’s inventory. It’s not exactly tight at the
best of times, but there’s a lot of electronics I can’t account for. I can’t see the Confederation Navy breaking in here to
steal a truck full of spare parts. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Al stared at the screen, which had frozen on the last image of the spacesuited guy stepping into
Mindori
’s airlock. “All right, so we’ve got two separate things going on here. Kiera hits Bernhard, and a hellhawk helps someone
steal our electrical stuff. The first one I can understand. But the hellhawk… Can you figure what it’s doing?”

“No. But it’s back here right now. We can just ask it straight out.
Mindori
docked on the ledge this morning. Kiera’s got her engineering teams out there fitting it ready for a long-duration flight.
Something else to consider: our defence network says another hellhawk has gone missing from its patrol. They’re running a
check on the rest to see how many are still there.”

Al leaned back into the chair, and grinned happily. “They could be trying to break free. How long till that food factory they
need is fixed?”

“Another week. Five days if we really hustle.”

“Then hustle, Emmet. Meantime I’m going out to take a ride in Cameron. He can talk to the other hellhawks for me, without
Kiera listening in.”

______

Gerald’s fractured thoughts slithered through a universe of darkness and pain. He didn’t know where he was, what he was doing.
He didn’t really care. Flashes erupted from time to time as neurons made erratic connections, releasing bright images of Marie.
His thoughts clustered round them like worshipful congregations. The reason for such adulation was slipping from him.

Voices began to impinge on his miserable existence. A chorus of whispers. Insistent. Relentless. Growing louder, stronger.
They began to intrude on his vague consciousness.

A blast of white-hot pain put him in sudden, frightening contact with his body again.

Let us in. End the torment. We can help.

The pain changed position and texture. Burning.

We can stop it.

I can stop it. Let me in. I want to help.

No, me. I’m the one you need.

Me.

I’m have the secret to end their torture.

There was sound. Real sound, rattling through the air. His own thin screams. And laughter. Cruel cruel laughter.

Gerald.