When she finally located the guilty door and opened it, she emerged into a vast maintenance shop that had been converted into a cybernetic factory. Rows of industrial machinery were pounding away with furious intent, hammering, drilling, and cutting components out of raw metal. Crude conveyer belts had been set up between them, carrying the freshly minted chunks of metal to assembly tables at one end. Over two dozen non-possessed workers were employed building machine guns. They were stripped to the waist, their skin gleaming with sweat from the unfiltered heat given off by the machinery.
None of it really registered with Gerald, while Loren looked round in complete confusion. She walked over to one of the non-possessed workers.
“Hey! You. What the hell are these for?”
The man looked up in shock, then bowed his head. “They’re guns,” he grunted sullenly.
“I can see that, but what are they for?”
“Kiera.”
It was all the answer she was going to get from him. Loren picked up one of the guns, her hands slipping on the fine spray of protective oil. Neither she nor Gerald knew much about weapons outside of a didactic course they’d both taken to handle the laser hunting rifle they were allowed on the homestead. Even so, this looked strange. She watched one being put together. Its firing mechanism was too large, and the barrel was lined with some kind of composite.
Memories which belonged to neither of them foamed away behind Gerald’s eyes. Memories of mud and pain. Of dark humanoid monsters armed with blazing machine guns, advancing with deadly inexorability out of the grey rain.
Mortonridge. Kiera was building the kind of weapons the Confederation had used at Mortonridge. Against the possessed!
Loren looked round the factory again, thoroughly unnerved by what she was seeing. The production rate must run into hundreds a day. She was surrounded by non-possessed churning out the one weapon that could blast her back to the beyond in a second. If they had any ammunition.
She checked over the gun she was holding, wiping off the surplus oil with a tissue. Satisfied it was fully functional, she left the factory and started hunting for the second one. It wouldn’t be too far away.
Monterey was twenty kilometres away; Cameron’s approach made it look as though the asteroid was moving to eclipse New California. Sliding across the crescent as it expanded in the promenade deck’s big window. The flight path, coming in at ninety degrees to the rotation axis made it look as though the rock was sprouting a glittery metallic mushroom straight up. That changed as Cameron curved round above the counter-rotating spaceport, and started to slide in parallel to the spindle. The docking ledge was directly ahead, a deep circular gully chiselled into the rock, with tiny brilliant lights on one side producing wide circles of illumination on the other. Orientation shifted again as the hellhawk chased the asteroid’s rotation, turning the gully sides to a floor and ceiling. And Al finally began to understand the way centrifugal force worked.
An explosion bloomed out of the cliff-face rear of the ledge, quarter of the way round from Cameron’s position. It came from a section of rock that was clad in a big mosaic of metal and composite equipment. A broad fountain of brilliant white gas, moving sluggishly enough to be a liquid, spitting out from a jagged hole at the centre of the machinery. Tiny chunks of solid matter spun through the plume.
Al took the Havana from his mouth and crossed over to the window, pressing against it for a better look. “Holy shit. Cameron, what the hell was that? Is the Navy here already?”
“No, Al. There’s been a breach in the rock. I’m monitoring the radio, nobody’s quite sure what happened.”
“Where did it happen?” Al was straining to see if there were any hellhawks or people on the ledge near the plume.
“It’s in an industrial sector, where you were repairing that nutrient fluid refinery.”
Al slammed the palm of his hand into the window. “That bitch !” His three small scars were snow-white against a burning cheek. He stared at the plume as it slowly died down, exposing the crumpled wreckage that was peeling away from the vertical rock. “Okay, a straight fight is what she wants, that what she gets.”
“Al, I’m picking up a broadband message to the fleet. It’s Kiera.”
One of the small circular ports along the side of the observation deck shimmered over and began showing Kiera’s face. “. . . after Arnstat there can be no alternative. The Confederation Navy is coming, and with the numbers to defeat us. Unless you want to be banished back to the beyond, we have to transfer ourselves down to the planet. I have the means to do this, and the ability to maintain our authority on the surface without relying on the SD platforms and antimatter. Everything you have now, your status and position, can be continued under my patronage. And this time around you don’t have to risk yourselves on those dangerous war missions of Capone’s. His day is over. For those of you who choose to have a privileged future, get in touch with Luigi, he will be joining you in the Swabia. If you follow him to low orbit, I will provide the means to establish yourselves on the surface. Anyone who wants to stay and wait for the Navy, feel free.”
“Damnit.” Al picked up the black telephone. “Cameron, get me Silvano.”
“He’s there, boss.”
“Silvano?” Al yelled. “You hearing Kiera?”
“I hear her, boss,” the lieutenant’s voice crackled.
“Tell Emmet he’s to stop any ship that doesn’t stay where it is any way he God damn can. I’ll talk to the fleet myself later. And I want that fucking message closed down. Now! Send a bunch of our soldiers to surround her headquarters, don’t let anybody out. I’m gonna come and deal with her personally. Tonight she starts sleeping with the fish.”
“You got it.”
“I’ll be docking any minute. I want you and some of the guys there to meet me. Loyal ones, Silvano.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
Luigi arrived at the base of the docking spindle feeling pretty damn good. The waiting and plotting had been getting to him, too much like sneaking around in the dark. He was an out-in-the-open kind of guy. Kiera had insisted he keep a low profile: he was still running round after that nobody Malone down in the gym, shovelling shit for non-possessed. The times when he got out to meet his old friends flying the Organization warships were few and far between, and at the meetings all he did was drop a few words of sedition, plant the seeds of doubt.
Every time he’d go back to Kiera and assure her the fleet was losing patience with Capone. Which was so. But he hyped the figures a little, carving himself a bigger slice.
Now that didn’t matter any more. He’d walked out of Malone’s cruddy basement as soon as Arnstat registered, not even waiting for Kiera’s call. This was it, their chance. Once he was back out there with the fleet, all those numbers wouldn’t mean shit. They’d follow him again, he knew it. He’d always been good with his lieutenants, they respected him.
The big transfer chamber at the axial hub was almost deserted when he came out of the tube. He air-swam over to the doors for the commuter cabs.
A man and a woman glided across to him. It annoyed Luigi, but this wasn’t the place to make a scene. Ten minutes, ten , and he’d be back inside a starship again, in command.
“I remember you,” Kingsley Pryor said. “You were one of Capone’s lieutenants.”
“What’s it to you, pal?” Luigi snapped back. He’d never been able to live with the nudges and whispers which followed him everywhere, like he was some kind of child molester on the run.