The train let out a long annoyed whistle, sending a fountain of steam rocketing up into the sky. Metallic screeches and janglings came pouring out of the engine when its riders realized how committed the townie blockaders were. Its pistons pounded away, reversing the wheel spin.
Luca and Marcella stood their ground as it howled forwards. A thought-smile flashed between them, and they stared down at the tracks, concentrating. The rails just in front of their feet creaked once, then split cleanly. Bolts holding them to the timber sleepers shot into the air, and the rails started to curl up, rolling into huge spirals. Flame spewed out of the train’s wheels. The riders had to exert a lot of energistic strength to halt its momentum. It stopped a couple of yards short of the coils. Billows of angry steam jetted out of valves all along the underside, water splattered down onto the tracks. A thick iron door banged open on the side of the driver’s cabin. Bruce Spanton jumped down.
He was dressed in anti-hero black leathers, impenetrable sunglasses pressed tight against his face. Heavy boots crunched on the gravel chippings of the embankment as he stalked towards the huddled townsfolk. A holster with a gold-plated Uzi slapped his leg with every step.
“Hello,” Luca muttered, “Somebody watched way too many bad cable movies when they were younger.”
Marcella subdued a grin as the ersatz Bad Guy halted in front of them.
“You,” Bruce Spanton growled. “You’re in my way, friend. You must feel lucky to try a move like that.”
“What do you boys want here?” Luca asked wearily. The bad vibes emanating from Spanton and the others in the train weren’t entirely forged. Not everyone on Norfolk had calmed down after returning from the beyond.
“Me and the guys, just passing through,” Spanton said challengingly. “No law against that, here, is there?”
“No law, but plenty of wishes,” Luca said. “This county doesn’t want you. I’m sure you’ll respect that majority opinion.”
“Tough shit. You got us. What you gonna do, call the cops?”
A big silver Western sheriff’s badge mushroomed on the front of Marcella’s tunic. “I am the police in Colsterworth.”
“Listen,” Bruce Spanton said. “We’re just here to check out the town. Have us a bit of fun. Stock up on some food, grab some Norfolk Tears. Then tomorrow we’ll be gone. We don’t want no trouble; it’s not as if we want to stay here. Crappy dump like this, not our scene. Know what I mean?”
“And how are you going to pay for your food?” Marcella asked. Luca did his best not to turn and frown at her.
“Pay for it?” Spanton yelled in astonishment. “What the fuck are you scoring, sister? We don’t pay for anything any more. That got left behind along with all the rest of the lawyers and shit we had to put up with back there.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Luca said. “It’s our food. Not yours.”
“It’s not yours, shithead. It belongs to everyone.”
“We’ve got it. You don’t. It’s ours. That simple enough for you?”
“Fuck you. We’ve got to eat. We’ve got a right to eat.”
“I remember you now,” Luca said. “You were one of Dexter’s people. Real devout arse licker. Do you miss him?”
Bruce Spanton stabbed a finger at Luca. “I’m going to remember you, shithead. And you’re going to wish I fucking hadn’t.”
“Learn the rules when you go abroad,” Luca said forcefully. “And then live by them. Now either you climb back on your pathetic little cartoon mean machine and leave. Or, you stay and find yourself a useful job, and earn a living like everybody else. Because we’re not in the business of supporting worthless parasite scum like you.”
“Get a jo . . .” disbelief and rage made Bruce Spanton splutter to a halt. “What the hell is this?”
“For you, exactly that: Hell. Now get out of our county before we run you out.” Luca heard several cheers from behind him.
The sound made Bruce Spanton look up. He glanced round the crowd, sensing their mood, the belligerence and resentment focusing on him. “You fuckers are crazy. You know that? Crazy! We’ve just escaped from all this shit. And you’re trying to bring it back.”
“All we’re doing is building ourselves a life as best we can,” Luca said. “Join in, or fuck off.”
“Oh we’ll be back,” Bruce Spanton said, tight lipped. “You’ll see. And people will join us, not you. Know why? Because it’s easier.” He stomped off back to the train.
Marcella grinned at his back. “We won. We showed the bastards, eh? Not such a bad combination, you and me. We won’t be seeing them again.”
“This is a small island on a small planet,” Luca said, more troubled than he wanted to be by Spanton’s parting shot.
Chapter 03
Sinon’s serjeant body had been divested of its last medical package just five hours before the Catalpa flew out of its wormhole terminus above Ombey. The voidhawk’s crew toroid was overcrowded, carrying thirty-five of the hulking serjeants and their five-strong biomedical supervisory team in addition to the usual crew. Heavy dull-rust coloured bodies stood almost shoulder to shoulder as they performed lumbering callisthenics all around the central corridor, discovering for themselves the parameters of their new physiques.
There was no fatigue in the fashion of a genuinely human body, the tiredness and tingling aches. Instead blood sugar depletion and muscle tissue stress registered as mental warning tones within the neural array housing the controlling personality. Sinon thought they must be similar to a neural nanonic display, but grey and characterless rather than the full-spectrum iconographic programs which Adamists enjoyed. Interpreting them was simple enough, thankfully.
He was actually quite satisfied with the body he now possessed (even though it was unable to smile at that particular irony for him). The deep scars of the serjeant’s assembly surgery were almost healed. What minimal restriction they imposed on his movements would be gone within a few more days. Even his sensorium was up to the standard of an Edenist body. Michael Saldana certainly hadn’t skimped on the design of the bitek construct’s genetic sequence.
Acclimatisation to his new circumstances had twinned a growing confidence throughout the flight. A psychological boost similar to a patient recovering from his injuries as more and more of the medical packages became redundant. In this case shared with all the other serjeant personalities who were going through identical emotional uplifts, the general affinity band merging their emerging gratification into synergistic optimism.
Despite a total lack of hormonal glands, Sinon was hot for the Mortonridge Liberation campaign to begin. He asked the Catalpa to share the view provided by its sensor blisters as the wormhole terminus closed behind them. The external image surged into his mind; featuring Ombey as a silver and blue crescent a hundred and twenty thousand kilometres ahead. Several settled asteroids swung along high orbits, grubby brown specks muffled by a fluctuating swirl of silver stardust as their industrial stations deflected spears of raw sunlight. Larger, more regular motes of light swarmed around Catalpa , its cousins emerging from their termini and accelerating in towards the planet.
This particular squadron was comprised of just over three hundred of the bitek starships. It wasn’t even the first to arrive at the Kingdom principality today. The Royal Navy’s strategic defence centre on Guyana had combined its flight management operations and sensors with civil traffic control to guide the torrent of arriving starships into parking orbits.
The voidhawks headed down towards the planet, merging into a long line as they spiralled into alignment over the equator. They shared the five hundred kilometre orbit with their cousins and Adamist starships from every star system officially allied to the Kingdom. Military and civil transports unloaded their cargo pods into fleets of flyers and spaceplanes; Confederation Navy assault cruisers had brought an entire battalion of marines, and even the voidhawks were eager to see the huge Kulu Royal Navy Aquilae-class starships.