The Neutronium Alchemist

1

It seemed to Louise Kavanagh as though the fearsome midsummer heat had persisted for endless, dreary weeks rather than just the four Duke-days since the last meagre shower of rain. Air from the Devil’s cookhouse, the old women of the county called this awful unbreathable stillness which blanketed the wolds. It complemented Louise’s mood perfectly. She didn’t feel much of anything these days. Destiny had apparently chosen her to spend her waking hours doing nothing but wait.

Officially, she was waiting for her father, who was away leading the Stoke County militia help quell the insurrection which the Democratic Land Union had mounted in Boston. The last time he’d phoned was three days ago, a quick, grim call saying the situation was worse than the Lord Lieutenant had led them to believe. That had made Louise’s mother worry frantically. Which meant Louise and Genevieve had to creep round Cricklade Manor like mice so as not to worsen her temper.

And there had been no word since, not of Father nor any of the militia troops. The whole county was crackling with rumours, of course. Of terrible battles, and beastly acts of savagery by the Union irregulars. Louise tried hard to close her ears to them, convinced it was just wicked propaganda put about by Union sympathizers. Nobody really knew anything. Boston could have been on another planet as far as Stoke County was concerned. Even bland accounts of ‘disturbances’, reported on the nightly news programmes, had ceased after the county militias encircled the city. Censored by the government.

All they could do was wait helplessly for the militias to triumph, as they surely would.

Louise and Genevieve had spent yet another morning milling aimlessly around the manor. It was a tricky task; sitting about doing nothing was so incredibly boring, yet if they drew attention to themselves they would be given some menial domestic job to do. With the young men away, the maids and older menservants were struggling with the normal day-to-day running of the rambling building. And the estate farms outside, with their skeleton workforce, were falling dismayingly far behind in their preparations for the summer’s second cereal crop.

By lunchtime, the ennui had even started to get to Louise, so she had suggested she and her sister went riding. They had to saddle the horses themselves, but it was worth it just to be away from the manor for a few hours.

Louise’s horse picked its way gingerly over the ground. Duke’s hot rays had flayed open the soil, producing a wrinkled network of cracks. The aboriginal plants which had all flowered in unison at midsummer were long dead now. Where ten days ago the grassland had been dusted with graceful white and pink stars, small shrivelled petals now skipped about like minute autumn leaves. In some hollows they had drifted in loose dunes up to a foot deep.

‘Why do you suppose the Union hates us so?’ Genevieve asked querulously. ‘Just because Daddy’s got a temper doesn’t mean he’s a bad man.’

Louise procured a sympathetic smile for her younger sister. Everyone said how alike they were, twins born four years apart. And indeed it was a bit like looking into a mirror at times; the same features, rich dark hair, delicate nose, and almost oriental eyes. But smaller, and slightly chubbier. And right now, brokenly glum.

Genevieve had been sensitive to her moodiness for the last week, not wanting to say anything significant in case it made big sister even more unaccountably irritable.

She does idolize me so, Louise thought. Pity she couldn’t have chosen a better role model.

‘It’s not just Daddy, nor even the Kavanaghs,’ Louise said. ‘They simply don’t like the way Norfolk works.’

‘But why? Everybody in Stoke County is happy.’

‘Everybody in the county is provided for. There’s a difference. How would you feel if you had to work in the fields all day long for every day of your life, and saw the two of us riding by without a care in the world?’

Genevieve looked puzzled. ‘Not sure.’

‘You’d resent it, and you’d want to change places.’

‘I suppose so.’ She gave a sly grin. ‘Then I’d be the one who resented them.’

‘Exactly. That’s the problem.’

‘But the things people are saying the Union is doing . . .’ Genevieve said uncertainly. ‘I heard two of the maids talking about it this morning. They were saying horrible things. I ran away after a minute.’

‘They’re lying. If anybody in Stoke County knew what was going on in Boston, it would be us, the Kavanaghs. The maids are going to be the last to find out.’

Genevieve shone a reverent smile at her sister. ‘You’re so clever, Louise.’

‘You’re clever too, Gen. Same genes, remember.’

Genevieve smiled again, then spurred her horse on ahead, laughing gladly. Merlin, their sheepdog, chased off after her, kicking up whirling flurries of brown petals.

Louise instinctively urged her own horse into a canter, heading towards Wardley Wood, a mile ahead of her. In summers past the sisters had claimed it as their own adventure playground. This summer, though, it held an added poignancy. This summer it contained the memory of Joshua Calvert. Joshua and the things they’d done as they lazed by the side of the rock pools. Every outrageous sexual act, acts which no true well-born Norfolk lady would ever commit. Acts which she couldn’t wait for them to do again.

Also the acts which had made her throw up for the last three mornings in a row. Nanny had been her usual fuss the first two times. Thankfully, Louise had managed to conceal this morning’s bout of nausea, otherwise her mother would have been told. And Mother was pretty shrewd.

Louise grimaced forlornly. Everything will be fine once Joshua comes back. It had become almost a mantra recently.

Dear Jesus, but I hate this waiting.

Genevieve was a quarter of a mile from the wood, with Louise a hundred yards behind her, when they heard the train. The insistent tooting carried a long way in the calm air. Three short blasts, followed by a long one. The warning signal that it was approaching the open road crossing at Collyweston.

Genevieve reined her horse in, waiting for Louise to catch up with her. ‘It’s coming into town!’ the younger girl exclaimed.

Both of them knew the local train times by heart. Colsterworth had twelve passenger services a day. This one wasn’t one of them.

‘They’re coming back!’ Genevieve squealed. ‘Daddy’s back!’

Merlin picked up on her excitement, running round the horse, barking enthusiastically.

Louise bit her lip. She couldn’t think what else it could be. ‘I suppose so.’

‘It is. It is!’

‘All right, come on, then.’

*

Cricklade Manor lurked inside its picket of huge geneered cedars, an imposing stone mansion built in homage to the stately homes of an England as distant in time as in space. The glass walls of the ornate orangery abutting the east wing reflected Duke’s brilliant yellow sunlight in geometric ripples as the sisters rode along the greensward below the building.

When she was inside the ring of trees, Louise noticed the chunky blue-green farm ranger racing up the long gravel drive. She whooped loudly, goading her horse to an even faster gallop. Few people were allowed to drive the estate’s powered vehicles. And nobody drove them as fast as Daddy.

Louise soon left Genevieve well behind, with an exhausted Merlin trailing by almost quarter of a mile. She could see six figures crammed into the vehicle’s seats. And that was definitely Daddy driving. She didn’t recognize any of the others.

Another two farm rangers turned into the drive just as the first pulled up in front of the manor. Various household staff and Marjorie Kavanagh hurried down the broad steps to greet it.

Louise tumbled down off her horse and rushed up to her father. She flung her arms around him before he knew what was happening. He was dressed in the same military uniform as the day he left.

‘Daddy! You’re all right.’ She rubbed her cheek against the coarse khaki-green fabric of his jacket, feeling five years old again. Tears were threatening to brim up.

He stiffened inside her manic embrace, head slowly tipping down to look at her. When she glanced up adoringly she saw a look of mild incomprehension on his strong ruddy face.

For a horrible moment she thought he must have found out about the baby. Then a vile mockery of a smile came to his lips.

‘Hello, Louise. Nice to see you again.’

‘Daddy?’ She took a step backwards. What was wrong with him? She glanced uncertainly at her mother, who had just reached them.

Marjorie Kavanagh took in the scene with a fast glance. Grant looked just awful; tired, pale, and strangely nervous. Gods, what had happened in Boston?

She ignored Louise’s obvious hurt, and stepped up to him. ‘Welcome home,’ she murmured demurely. Her lips brushed his cheek.

‘Hello, dear,’ Grant Kavanagh said. It could have been a complete stranger for all the emotion in the voice.

He turned, almost in deference, Marjorie thought with growing bewilderment, and half-bowed to one of the men accompanying him. They were all strangers, none of them even wore Stoke County militia uniforms. The other two farm rangers were braking behind the first, also full of strangers.

‘Marjorie, I’d like you to meet Quinn Dexter. Quinn is a . . . priest. He’s going to be staying here with some of his followers.’

The young man who walked forward had the kind of gait Marjorie associated with the teenage louts she glimpsed occasionally in Colsterworth. Priest, my arse, she thought.

Quinn was dressed in a flowing robe of some incredibly black material; it looked like the kind of habit a millionaire monk would wear. There was no crucifix in sight. The face which smiled out at her from the voluminous hood was coldly vulpine. She noticed how everyone in his entourage was very careful not to get too close to him.

‘Intrigued, Father Dexter,’ she said, letting her irony show.

He blinked; and nodded thoughtfully, as if in recognition that they weren’t fooling each other.

‘Why are you here?’ Louise asked breathlessly.

‘Cricklade is going to be a refuge for Quinn’s sect,’ Grant Kavanagh said. ‘There was a lot of damage in Boston. So I offered him full use of the estate.’

‘What happened?’ Marjorie asked. Years of discipline necessary to enforce her position allowed her to keep her voice level, but what she really wanted to do was grab hold of Grant’s jacket collar and scream it in his face. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Genevieve scramble down off her horse, and run over to greet her father, her delicate face suffused with simple happiness. Before Marjorie could say anything, Louise thrust out an arm, and stopped her dead in her tracks. Thank God for that, Marjorie thought; there was no telling how these aloof strangers would react to excitable little girls.

Genevieve’s face instantly turned woeful, staring up at her untouchable father with widened, mutinous eyes. But Louise kept a firmly protective arm round her shoulder.

‘The rebellion is over,’ Grant said. He hadn’t even noticed Genevieve’s approach.

‘You mean you rounded up the Union people?’

‘The rebellion is over,’ Grant repeated flatly.

Marjorie was at a loss what to do next. Away in the distance she could hear Merlin barking with unusual aggression. The fat old sheepdog was lumbering along towards the group outside the manor.

‘We shall begin straight away,’ Quinn announced abruptly. He started up the steps towards the wide double doors, long pleats of his robe swaying leadenly around his ankles.

The manor staff clustering with considerable curiosity on top of the steps parted nervously. Quinn’s companions surged after him.

Grant’s face twitched in what was nearly an apology to Marjorie as the new arrivals clambered out of the farm rangers to hurry up the steps after their singular priest. Most of them were men, all with exactly the same kind of agitated expression.

They look as if they’re going to their own execution, Marjorie thought. And the clothes a couple of them wore were bizarre. Like historical military costumes; grey greatcoats with broad scarlet lapels and yards of looping gold braid. She strove to remember history lessons from too many years ago, images of Teutonic officers hazy in her mind.

‘We’d better go in,’ Grant said encouragingly. Which was absurd. Grant Kavanagh neither asked nor suggested anything on his own doorstep, he gave orders.

Marjorie gave a reluctant nod, and joined him. ‘You two stay out here,’ she told her daughters. ‘I want you to see to Merlin, then stable your horses.’ While I find out just what the hell is going on around here, she completed silently.

The two sisters were virtually clinging together at the bottom of the steps, faces heavy with doubt and dismay. ‘Yes, Mother,’ Louise said meekly. She started to tug on Genevieve’s black riding jacket.

Quinn paused on the threshold of the manor, giving the grounds a final survey. Misgivings were beginning to stir his mind. When he was back in Boston it seemed only right that he should be part of the vanguard bringing the gospel of God’s Brother to the whole island of Kesteven. None could stand before him when his serpent beast was unleashed. But there were so many lost souls returning from the beyond; inevitably some dared to disobey, while others wavered after he had passed among them to issue the word. In truth he could only depend upon the closest disciples he had gathered.

The sect acolytes he had left in Boston to tame the returned souls, to teach them the real reason why they had been brought back, agreed to do his bidding simply from fear. That was why he had come to the countryside, to levy the creed upon all the souls, both the living and the dead, of this wretched planet. With a bigger number of followers inducted, genuinely believing the task God’s Brother had given them, then ultimately their doctrine would triumph.

But this land which Luca Comar had described in glowing terms was so empty, kilometre after kilometre of grassland and fields, populated by dozing hamlets of cowed peasants; a temperate climate version of Lalonde.

There had to be more to his purpose than this. God’s Brother would never have chosen him for such a simple labour. There were hundreds of planets in the Confederation crying out to hear His word, to follow Him into the final battle against the false gods of Earth’s religions, where Night would dawn for evermore.

After this evening I shall have to search myself to see where He guides me; I must find my proper role in His plan.

His gaze finished up on the Kavanagh sisters, who were staring up at him, both trying to be courageous in the face of the strangeness falling on their home as softly and inexorably as midwinter snow. The elder one would make a good reward for disciples who demonstrated loyalty, and the child might be of some use to a returned soul. God’s Brother found a use for everything.

Content, for the moment, Quinn swept into the hall, relishing the opulence which greeted him. Tonight at least he could indulge himself in decadent splendour, quickening his serpent beast. For who did not appreciate absolute luxury?

The disciples knew their duties well enough, needing no supervision. They would flush out the manor’s staff and open their bodies for possession. A chore repeated endlessly over the last week. His work would come later, selecting those who were worthy of a second chance at life, who would embrace the Night.

*

‘What—!’ Genevieve began hotly as the last of the odd adults disappeared inside the manor’s entrance.

Louise’s hand clamped over her mouth. ‘Come on!’ She pulled hard on Genevieve’s arm, nearly unbalancing the younger girl. Genevieve reluctantly allowed herself to be steered away.

‘You heard Mother,’ Louise said. ‘We’re to look after the horses.’

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘I don’t know! All right? Mother will sort everything out.’ The words brought scant reassurance. What had happened to Daddy?

Boston must have been truly terrible to have affected him so.

Louise undid the strap on her riding hat, and tucked it under an arm. The manor and its grounds had become very quiet all of a sudden. The big entrance hall doors swinging shut had acted like a signal for the birds to fall still. Even the horses were docile.

The funereal sensation was broken by Merlin who had finally reached the gravel driveway. He barked quite piteously as he nosed round Louise’s feet, his tongue lolling out as he wheezed heavily.

Louise gathered up the reins of both horses and started to lead them towards the stables. Genevieve grabbed Merlin’s collar and hauled him along.

When they reached the stable block at the rear of the west wing there was nobody there, not even the two young stable lads Mr Butterworth had left in charge. The horses’ hoofs made an almighty clattering on the cobbles of the yard outside, the noise reverberating off the walls.

‘Louise,’ Genevieve said forlornly. ‘I don’t like this. Those people with Daddy were really peculiar.’

‘I know. But Mother will tell us what to do.’

‘She went inside with them.’

‘Yes.’ Louise realized just how anxious mother had been for her and Genevieve to get away from Daddy’s friends. She looked round the yard, uncertain what to do next. Would Mother send for them, or should they go in? Daddy would expect to talk with them. The old Daddy, she reminded herself sadly.

Louise settled for stalling. There was plenty to do in the stables; take the saddles off, brush the horses down, water them. She and Genevieve both took off their riding jackets and set to.

It was twenty minutes later, while they were putting the saddles back in the tack room, when they heard the first scream. The shock was all the more intense because it was male. A raw-throated yell of pain which dwindled away into a sobbing whimper.

Genevieve quietly put her arm around Louise’s waist. Louise could feel her trembling, and patted her softly. ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered.

The two of them edged over to the window and peered out. There was nothing to see in the courtyard. The manor’s windows were black and blank, sucking in Duke’s light.

‘I’ll go and find out what’s happening,’ Louise said.

‘No!’ Genevieve pulled at her urgently. ‘Don’t leave me alone. Please, Louise.’ She was on the verge of tears.

Louise’s hold tightened in reflex. ‘OK, Gen, I won’t leave you.’

‘Promise? Really truly promise?’

‘Promise!’ She realized she was just as frightened as Genevieve. ‘But we must find out what Mother wants us to do.’

Genevieve nodded brokenly. ‘If you say so.’

Louise looked at the high stone wall of the west wing, sizing it up. What would Joshua do in a situation like this? She thought about the layout of the wing, the family apartments, the servants’ utility passages. Rooms and corridors she knew better than anyone except for the chief housekeeper, and possibly Daddy.

She took Genevieve by the hand. ‘Come on. We’ll try and get up to Mother’s boudoir without anyone seeing us. She’s bound to go there eventually.’

They crept out into the courtyard and scuttled quickly along the foot of the wall to a small green door which led into a storeroom at the back of the kitchens. Louise expected a shouted challenge at any moment. She was panting by the time she heaved on the big iron handle and nipped inside.

The storeroom was filled with sacks of flour, and vegetables piled high in various wooden bays. Two narrow window slits, set high in the wall, cast a paltry grey light through their cobweb-caked panes.

Louise flicked the switch as Genevieve closed the door. A couple of naked light spheres on the roof sputtered weakly, then went out.

‘Damnation!’ Louise took Genevieve’s hand, and threaded her way carefully round the boxes and sacks.

The utility corridor beyond had plain white plaster walls, and pale-yellow flagstones. Light spheres every twenty feet along its ceiling were flickering on and off completely at random. The effect made Louise feel mildly giddy, as if the corridor was swaying about.

‘What’s doing that?’ Genevieve whispered fiercely.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she replied carefully. A dreadful ache of loneliness had stolen up on her without any warning. Cricklade didn’t belong to them any more, she knew that now.

They made their way along the disconcerting corridor to the antechamber at the end. A cast-iron spiral staircase wound up through the ceiling.

Louise paused to hear if anyone was coming down. Then, satisfied they were still alone, started up.

The manor’s main corridors were a vast contrast to the plain servant utilities. Wide strips of thick green and gold carpet ran along polished golden wood planks, the walls were hung with huge traditional oil paintings in ostentatious gilt frames. Small antique chests stood at regular intervals, holding either delicate objets d’art or cut-crystal vases with fragrant blooms of terrestrial and xenoc flowers grown in the manor’s own conservatory.

The outside of the door at the top of the spiral stair was disguised as a wall panel. Louise teased it open, and peeped out. A grand stained-glass window at the far end of the corridor was sending out broad fans of coloured light to dye the walls and ceiling with tartan splashes. Engraved light spheres on the ceiling were glowing a lame amber. All of them emitted an unhealthy buzzing sound.

‘Nobody about,’ Louise said.

The two of them darted out and shut the panel behind them. They started edging towards their mother’s boudoir.

A distant cry sounded. Louise couldn’t work out where it came from. It wasn’t close, though; thank sweet Jesus.

‘Let’s go back,’ Genevieve said. ‘Please, Louise. Mummy knows we went to the stables. She’ll find us there.’

‘We’ll just see if she’s here first. If she’s not, then we’ll go straight back.’

They heard the anguished cry again, even softer this time.

The boudoir door was twenty feet away. Louise steeled herself, and took a step towards it.

‘Oh God, no! No, no, no. Stop it. Grant! Dear God, help me!’

Louise’s muscles locked in terror. It was her mother’s voice – Mother’s scream – coming from behind the boudoir door.

‘Grant, no! Oh, please. Please, no more.’ A long, shrill howl of pain followed.

Genevieve was clutching at her in horror, soft whimpers bubbling from her open mouth. The light spheres right outside the boudoir door grew brighter. Within seconds they glared hotter than Duke at noon. Both of them burst apart with a thin pop, sending slivers of milky glass tinkling down on the carpet and floorboards.

Marjorie Kavanagh screeched again.

‘Mummy!’ Genevieve wailed.

Marjorie Kavanagh’s scream broke off. There was a muffled, inexplicable thud from behind the door. Then: ‘RUN! RUN, DARLING. JUST RUN, NOW!’

Louise was already stumbling back towards the concealed stairway door, holding on to a distraught, sobbing Genevieve. The boudoir door flew open, wood splintering from the force of the blow which struck it. A solid shaft of sickly emerald light punched out into the corridor. Spidery shadows moved within it, growing denser.

Two figures emerged.

Louise gagged. It was Rachel Handley, one of the maids. She looked the same as normal. Except her hair. It had turned brick-red, the strands curling and coiling around each other in slow, oily movements.

Then Daddy was standing beside the chunky girl, still in his militia uniform. His face wore a foreign, sneering smile.

‘Come to Papa, baby,’ he growled happily, and took a step towards Louise.

All Louise could do was shake her head hopelessly. Genevieve had slumped to her knees, bawling and shaking violently.

‘Come on, baby.’ His voice had fallen to a silky coo.

Louise couldn’t stop the sob that burped from her lips. Soon it would become a mad scream which would never end.

Her father laughed delightedly. A shape moved through the liquid green light behind him and Rachel.

Louise was so numbed she could no longer even manage a solitary gasp of surprise. It was Mrs Charlsworth, their nanny. Variously tyrant and surrogate mother, confidante and traitor. A rotund, middle-aged woman, with prematurely greying hair, and an otherwise sour face softened by hundreds of granny wrinkles.

She stabbed a knitting needle straight at Grant Kavanagh’s face, aiming for his left eye. ‘Leave my girls alone, you bloody fiend,’ she yelled defiantly.

Louise could never quite remember exactly what happened next. Blood and miniature lightning forks. Rachel Handley letting out a clarion shriek. Shattered glass erupting from the frames of the oil paintings down half the length of the corridor as the blazing white lightning strobed violently.

Louise crammed her hands over her ears as the shriek threatened to crack open her skull. The lightning died away. When she looked up, instead of her father there was a hulking humanoid shape standing beside Rachel. It wore strange armour, made entirely of little squares of dark metal, embossed with scarlet runes, and tied together with brass wire. ‘Bitch!’ it stormed at a quailing Mrs Charlsworth. Thick streamers of bright orange smoke were belching out of its eye slits.

Rachel Handley’s arms turned incandescent. She clamped her splayed fingers over Mrs Charlsworth’s cheeks, teeth bared in exertion as she pushed in. Skin sizzled and charred below her fingertips. Mrs Charlsworth mewed in agony. The maid released her. She slumped backwards, her head lolling to one side; and she looked at Louise, smiling as tears seeped down her ruined cheeks. ‘Go,’ she mouthed.

The grievous plea seemed to kick directly into Louise’s nervous system. She pushed her shoulders into the wall, levering herself upright.

Mrs Charlsworth grinned mirthlessly as the maid and the burly warrior closed on her to consummate their vengeance. She raised the pathetic knitting needle again.

Ribbons of white fire snaked round Rachel’s arms as she grinned at her prey. Small balls of it dripped off her fingertips, flying horizontally towards the stricken woman, eating eagerly through the starched grey uniform. A booming laugh emerged from the clinking armour, mingling with Mrs Charlsworth’s gurgles of pain.

Louise put her arm under Genevieve’s shoulder and lifted her bodily. Flashes of light and the sounds of Mrs Charlsworth’s torture flooded the corridor behind her.

I mustn’t turn back. I mustn’t.

Her fingers found the catch for the concealed door and it swung open silently. She almost hurled Genevieve through the gap into the gloom beyond, heedless of whether anyone else was on the stairs.

The door slid shut.

‘Gen? Gen!’ Louise shook the petrified girl. ‘Gen, we have to get out of here.’ There was no response. ‘Oh dear Jesus.’ The urge to curl into a ball and weep her troubles away was strengthening.

If I do that, I’ll die. And the baby with me.

She tightened her grip on Genevieve’s hand, and hurried down the spiral stairs. At least Genevieve’s limbs were working. Though what would happen if they met another of those . . . people-creatures was another question altogether.

They’d just reached the small anteroom at the bottom of the spiral when a loud hammering began above. Louise started to run down the corridor to the storeroom. Genevieve stumbled along beside her; a low determined humming came from her lips.

The hammering stopped, and there was the brassy thump of an explosion. Tendrils of bluish static shivered down the spiral stair, grounding out through the floor. Red stone tiles quaked and cracked. The dimming light spheres along the ceiling sprang back to full intensity again.

‘Faster, Gen!’ she shouted.

They charged into the storeroom and through the green door leading to the courtyard. Merlin was standing in the wide open gateway of the stable block, barking incessantly. Louise headed straight for him. If they could take a horse they’d be free. She could ride better than anyone else at the manor.

They were still five yards short of the stables when two people ran out of the storeroom. It was Rachel and her father. Except it’s not really him, she thought desperately.

‘Come back, Louise,’ the dark knight called. ‘Come along, sweetie. Daddy wants a cuddle.’

Louise and Genevieve dashed round the gates. Merlin stared out at the yard for a second, then turned quickly and followed them inside.

Globules of white fire smashed into the stable doors, breaking apart into complex webs which probed the woodwork with the tenacity of a ghoul’s fingers. Glossy black paint blistered and vaporized, the planks began to blaze furiously.

‘Undo the stall doors,’ Louise called above the incendiary roar of the fire, and the braying, agitated horses. She had to say it again before Genevieve fumbled with the first bolt. The horse inside the stall shot out into the aisle which ran the length of the stable.

Louise rushed for the far end of the stables. Merlin was yapping hysterically behind her. Fire had spread from the doors to straw bundled loosely in the manger. Orange sparks were flying like rain in a hurricane. Thick arms of black smoke coiled insidiously along the ceiling.

The voices from outside called again, issuing orders and promises in equal amounts. None of which were real. Treachery on the grandest scale.

Screams were being added to the clamour in the courtyard now. Quinn’s disciples had inevitably gained the upper hand; Cricklade’s few remaining free servants were being hunted and possessed without any attempt at stealth.

Louise reached the stall at the end of the stables, the one with Daddy’s magnificent black stallion, a bloodline geneered to a perfection which nineteenth-century sporting kings could only dream of. The bolt slid back easily, and she grabbed the bridle before he had a chance to arrow into the aisle. He snorted furiously at her, but allowed her to steady him. She had to stand on a bale of hay in order to mount him.

The fire had spread with horrendous speed. Several of the stalls were burning now, their stout old timber walls shooting out wild sulphurous flames. Merlin was backing away from them, his barking fearful. Over half a dozen horses were milling in the aisle, whinnying direly. Flames had cut them off from the stable doors, the noisy inferno pressing them back from their one exit. She couldn’t see Gen.

‘Where are you?’ she shouted. ‘Gen!’

‘Here. I’m here.’ The voice was coming from an empty stall.

Louise urged the stallion forwards down the aisle, yelling wildly at the panicking horses in front of her. Two of them reared up, alarmed by this new, unexpected threat. They began to move en masse towards the flames.

‘Quick!’ Louise yelled.

Genevieve saw her chance, and sprinted out into the aisle. Louise leant over and grabbed her. At first she thought she’d miscalculated the girl’s weight, feeling herself starting to slide downwards. But then Genevieve snatched at the stallion’s mane, causing it to bay sharply. Just as Louise was sure her spine would snap, or she’d crash headfirst onto the aisle’s stone flagging, Genevieve levered herself up to straddle the base of the stallion’s neck.

The stable doors had been all but consumed by the eerily hot fire. Their remaining planks sagged and twisted on the glowing hinges, then lurched onto the cobbles with a loud bang.

With the intensity of the flames temporarily reduced, the horses raced for the door and their chance of freedom. Louise dug her heels into the stallion’s flanks, spurring it on. There was an exhilarating burst of speed. Yellow spires of flame splashed across her left arm and leg, making her cry out. Genevieve squealed in front of her, batting frantically at her blouse. The stench of singed hair solidified in her nostrils. Thin layers of smoke stretching across the aisle whipped across her face, stinging her eyes.

Then they were through, out of the gaping door with its wreath of tiny flames scrabbling at the ruined frame, chasing after the other horses. Fresh air and low sunlight washed over them. The hefty knight in the dark mosaic armour was standing ahead of them. Streamers of bright orange smoke were still pouring from his helmet’s eye slits. Sparks of white fire danced across his raised gauntlets. He started to point a rigid forefinger at them, the white fire building.

But the posse of crazed horses couldn’t be deflected. The first one flashed past stark inches from him. Alert to the danger they presented, even to someone with energistic power, he began to jump aside. That was his mistake. The second horse might have missed him if he’d stayed still. Instead, it struck him almost head on. The screaming horse buckled on top of him, forelegs snapping with an atrocious crack as inertia sent it hurtling forwards regardless. The knight was flung out sideways, spinning in the air. He landed bonelessly, bouncing a full foot above the cobbles before coming to a final rest. His armour vanished immediately, revealing Grant Kavanagh’s body, still clad in his militia uniform. The fabric was torn in a dozen places, stained scarlet by the blood pumping from open wounds.

Louise gasped, instinctively pulling the reins to halt the stallion. Daddy was hurt!

But the flowing blood swiftly staunched itself. Ragged tears of flesh started to close up. The uniform was stitching itself together. Dusty, grazed leather shoes became metallic boots. He shook his head, grunting in what was little more than dazed annoyance.

Louise stared for a second as he started to raise himself onto his elbows, then spurred the horse away.

‘Daddy!’ Genevieve shouted in anguish.

‘It’s not him,’ Louise told her through clenched teeth. ‘Not now. That’s something else. The Devil’s own monster.’

Rachel Handley stood in front of the arched entrance to the courtyard. Hands on hips, aroused wormlet hair threshing eagerly. ‘Nice try,’ she laughed derisively. A hand was raised, palm towards the sisters. The awful white fire ignited around her wrist, wispy talons flaring from her fingers. Her laugh deepened at the sight of Louise’s anguish, cutting across Merlin’s miserable barking.

The bullet-bolt of white fire which caught Rachel Handley an inch above her left eye came from somewhere behind Louise. It bored straight through the maid’s skull, detonating in the centre of the brain. The back of her head blew off in a gout of charred gore and rapidly dissipating violet flame. Her body remained upright for a second, then the muscles spasmed once before losing all tension. She pitched forwards. Bright arterial blood spilled out of her ruined, smoking brainpan.

Louise twisted round. The courtyard was empty apart from the woozy figure of her father still clambering to his feet. A hundred empty windows stared down at her. Faint screams echoed over the rooftops. Long swirls of flame churned noisily out of the stable block’s wide doors.

Genevieve was shaking violently again, crying in convulsive gulps. Concern for the little girl overcame Louise’s utter confusion, and she spurred the stallion once more, guiding it round the vile corpse and out through the courtyard’s entrance.

*

From where he was standing beside the window of the third-floor guest suite, Quinn Dexter watched the girl riding the superb black horse hell-for-leather over the manor’s greensward and towards the wolds. Not even his awesome energistic strength could reach the fleeing sisters from this distance.

He pursed his lips in distaste. Someone had aided them. Why, he couldn’t think. The traitor must surely know they would never go unpunished. God’s Brother saw all. Every soul was accountable in the end.

‘They’ll head for Colsterworth, of course,’ he said. ‘All they’re doing is postponing the inevitable for a couple of hours. Most of that poxy little town already belongs to us.’

‘Yes, Quinn,’ said the boy standing behind him.

‘And soon the whole world,’ Quinn muttered. And then what?

He turned, and smiled proudly. ‘It is so nice to see you again. I never thought I would. But He must have decided to reward me.’

‘I love you, Quinn,’ Lawrence Dillon said simply. The body of the stable lad he had possessed was completely naked, the scars from the act of possession already nothing more than faint, fading pink lines on the tanned skin.

‘I had to do what I did on Lalonde. You know that. We couldn’t take you with us.’

‘I know, Quinn,’ Lawrence said devoutly. ‘I was a liability. I was weak back then.’ He knelt at Quinn’s feet, and beamed up at the stem features of the black-robed figure. ‘But I’m not any more. Now I can help you again. It will be like before, only better. The whole universe will bow before you, Quinn.’

‘Yeah,’ Quinn Dexter said slowly, savouring the thought. ‘The fuckers just might.’

*

The datavised alert woke Ralph Hiltch from a desultory sleep. As an ESA head of station, he’d been assigned some temporary quarters in the Royal Navy wardroom. Strange impersonal surroundings, and the emotional cold turkey from bringing Gerald Skibbow to Guyana had left his thoughts racing as he lay on the bunk after a three-hour debrief session last night. In the end he’d wound up accessing a mild trank program to relax his body.

At least he hadn’t suffered any nightmares; though Jenny was never very far from the surface of his mind. A final frozen image of the mission: Jenny lying under a scrum of man-apes, datavising a kamikaze code into the power cell at her side. An image which didn’t need storing in a neural nanonics memory cell in order to retain its clarity. She’d thought it was preferable to the alternative. But was she right? It was a question he’d asked himself a lot during the voyage to Ombey.

He swung his legs over the side of his bunk, and ran fingers through hair that badly needed a wash. The room’s net processor informed him that Guyana asteroid had just gone to a code three alert status.

‘Shit, now what?’ As if he couldn’t guess.

His neural nanonics reported an incoming call from Ombey’s ESA office, tagged as the director, Roche Skark, himself. Ralph opened a secure channel to the net processor with a sense of grim inevitability. You didn’t have to be psychic to know it wasn’t going to be good.

‘Sorry to haul you back to active status so soon after you arrived,’ Roche Skark datavised. ‘But the shit’s just hit the fan. We need your expertise.’

‘Sir?’

‘It looks like three of the embassy personnel who came here on the Ekwan were sequestrated by the virus. They’ve gone down to the surface.’

‘What? Panic surged into Ralph’s mind. Not that abomination, not loose here in the Kingdom. Please God. ‘Are you certain?’

‘Yes. I’ve just come out of a Privy Council security conference with the Princess. She authorized the code three alert because of it.’

Ralph’s shoulders slumped. ‘Oh God, and I brought them here.’

‘You couldn’t have known.’

‘It’s my job to know. God damn, I grew slack on Lalonde.’

‘I doubt any of us would have done anything different.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Pity you couldn’t sneer with a datavise.

‘In any case, we’re right behind them. Admiral Farquar and my good colleague Jannike Dermot over at the ISA have been commendably swift in implementing damage limitation procedures. We estimate the embassy trio are barely seven hours ahead of you.’

Ralph thought about the damage one of those things could inflict in seven hours, and put his head in his hands. ‘That still gives them a lot of time to infect other people.’ Implications began to sink through his crust of dismay. ‘It’ll be an exponential effect.’

‘Possibly,’ Roche Skark admitted. ‘If it isn’t contained very quickly we may have to abandon the entire Xingu continent. Quarantine procedures are already in place, and the police are being told how to handle the situation. But I want you there to instil a bit of urgency, kick a bit of arse.’

‘Yes, sir. This active status call, does that mean I get to go after them in person?’

‘It does. Technically, you’re going down to advise the Xingu continent’s civil authorities. As far as I’m concerned you can engage in as much fieldwork as you want, with the proviso that you don’t expose yourself to the possibility of infection.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Ralph, I don’t mind telling you, what this energy virus can do scares the crap out of me. It has to be a precursor to something, some form of invasion. And safeguarding the Kingdom from such threats is my job. Yours too, come to that. So stop them, Ralph. Shoot first, and I’ll whitewash later if needs be.’

‘You’ve got it, sir.’

‘Good man. The Admiral has assigned a flyer to take you down to Pasto city spaceport, it’s leaving in twelve minutes. I’ll have a full situation briefing data package assembled ready for you to access on the way down. Anything you want, let me know.’

‘I’d like to take Will Danza and Dean Folan with me, and authorized to fire weapons on the surface. They know how to deal with people who have been sequestrated. Cathal Fitzgerald, too; he’s seen the virus at work.’

‘They’ll have the authorization before you land.’

*

Duchess had risen above the horizon by the time Colsterworth came into view. The red-dwarf sun occupied a portion of the horizon diametrically opposite Duke, the two of them struggling to contaminate the landscape below with their own unique spectrum.

Duchess was winning the battle, rising in time to Duke’s fall from the sky. The eastward slopes of the wolds were slowly slipping from verdant green to subdued burgundy. Aboriginal pine-analogue trees planted among the hedgerows of geneered hawthorn became grizzled pewter pillars. Even the stallion’s ebony hide was darkening.

Duke’s golden glow withdrew before the strengthening red tide.

For the first time in her life, Louise resented the primary’s retreat. Duchess-night was usually a magical time, twisting the familiar world into a land of mysterious shadows and balmy air. This time the red stain had a distinctly ominous quality.

‘Do you suppose Auntie Daphnie will be home?’ Genevieve asked for what must have been the fifth time.

‘I’m sure she will,’ Louise replied. It had taken Genevieve a good half-hour to stop crying after they’d escaped from Cricklade. Louise had concentrated so hard on comforting her sister, she’d almost stopped being afraid herself. Certainly it was easy to blank what had happened from her mind. And she wasn’t quite sure exactly what she was going to say to Aunt Daphnie. The actual truth would make her sound utterly mad. Yet anything less than the truth might not suffice. Whatever forces of justice and law were dispatched up to Cricklade would have to be well armed, and alert. The chief constable and the mayor had to believe what they faced was deadly real, not the imaginings of a half-hysterical teenage girl.

Fortunately she was a Kavanagh. People would have to listen. And please, dear Jesus, make them believe.

‘Is that a fire?’ Genevieve asked.

Louise jerked her head up. Colsterworth was spread out along a couple of miles of a shallow valley, growing up from the intersection of a river and the railway line. A somnolent little market town with ranks of neat terrace houses set amid small, pretty gardens. The larger homes of the important families occupied the gentle eastern slope, capturing the best view over the countryside. An industrial district of warehouses and small factories cluttered the ground around the wharf.

Three tall spires of filthy smoke were twisting up from the centre of the town. Flames burned at the base of one. Very bright flames. Whatever the building was, it glowed like molten iron.

‘Oh no,’ Louise gasped. ‘Not here, too.’ As she watched, one of the long river barges drifted past the last warehouse. Its decks were alight, the tarpaulin-covered cargo hold puffing out mushrooms of brown smoke. Louise guessed the barrels it carried were exploding. People were jumping off the bows, striking out for the bank.

‘Now what?’ Genevieve asked in a woeful voice.

‘Let me think.’ She had never considered that anywhere other than Cricklade was affected. But of course her father and that chilling young priest had stopped at Colsterworth first. And before that . . . A midwinter frost prickled her spine. Could it all have started at Boston? Everyone said an insurrection was beyond the Union’s ability to mount. Was the whole island to be conquered by these demons in human guise?

And if so, where do we go?

‘Look!’ Genevieve was pointing ahead.

Louise saw a Romany caravan being driven at considerable speed along one of the roads on the edge of town below them. The driver was standing on the seat, striking at the cob horse’s rump with a whip. It was a woman, her white dress flapping excitably in the wind.

‘She’s running away,’ Genevieve cried. ‘They can’t have got to her yet.’

The notion that they could join up with an adult who would be on their side was a glorious tonic for Louise. Even if it was just a simple Romany woman, she thought uncharitably. But then didn’t Romanies know about magic? The manor staff said they practised all sorts of dark arts. She might even know how to ward off the devils.

Louise took in the road ahead of the racing caravan with a keen sweep, trying to work out where they could meet it. There was nothing directly in front of the caravan, but three-quarters of a mile from the town was a large farmhouse.

Frantic animals were charging out of the open farmyard gate into the meadows; pigs, heifers, a trio of shire-horses, even a Labrador. The house’s windows flashed brightly, emitting solid beams of blue-white light which appeared quite dazzling under the scarlet sky.

‘She’s heading straight for them,’ Louise groaned. When she checked the careering caravan again it had just passed the last of Colsterworth’s terraced houses. There were too many trees and bends ahead for the driver to see the farmhouse.

Louise sized up the distance to the road, and snapped the bridle. ‘Hang on,’ she told Genevieve. The stallion charged forwards, dusky red grass blurring beneath its hoofs. It jumped the first fence with hardly a break in its rhythm. Louise and Genevieve bounced down hard on its back, the younger girl letting out a yap of pain.

A jeering crowd had emerged on the road behind the caravan, milling beneath the twin clumps of geneered silver birch trees which marked the town’s official boundary. It was almost as if they were unwilling, or unable, to venture out into the open fields. Several bolts of white fire were flung after the fleeing caravan, glinting stars which dwindled away after a few hundred yards.

Louise wanted to weep in frustration when she saw people walking out of the farmhouse and start down the road towards Colsterworth. The Romany woman still hadn’t noticed the danger ahead.

‘Shout at her! Stop her!’ she cried to Genevieve.

They covered the last three hundred yards bellowing wildly.

It was to no avail. They were close enough to the caravan to see the foam coating the nose of the piebald cob before the Romany woman caught sight of them. Even then she didn’t stop, although the reins were pulled back. The huge beast started to slow its frantic sprint to a more reasonable trot.

The stallion cleared the hedge and the ditch running alongside the road in an easy bound. Louise whipped it round to match the caravan’s pace. There was a tremendous clattering coming from inside the wooden frame with its gaudy paintwork, as if an entire kitchen’s worth of pots and pans were being juggled by malevolent clowns.

The Romany woman had long raven hair streaming out behind her, a brown face with round cheeks. Her white linen dress was stained with sweat. Defiant, wild eyes stared at the sisters. She made some kind of sign in the air.

A spell? Louise wondered. ‘Stop!’ she begged. ‘Please stop. They’re already ahead of you. They’re at that farmhouse, look.’

The Romany woman stood up, searching the land beyond the cob’s bobbing head. They had another quarter of a mile to go until they reached the farmhouse. But Louise had lost sight of the people who had come out of it.

‘How do you know?’ the woman called out.

‘Just stop!’ Genevieve squealed. Her small fists were bunched tight.

Carmitha looked the little girl over, then came to a decision. She nodded, and began to rein back.

The caravan’s front axle snapped with a prodigious crunching sound.

Carmitha just managed to grab hold of the frame as the whole caravan pitched forward. Sparks flew out from underneath her as the world tilted sharply. A last wrenching snap and the caravan ground to a halt. One of the front wheels trundled past Olivier, her cob horse, then rolled down into the dry ditch at the side of the road.

‘Shit!’ She glared at the girls on the big black stallion, their soot-stained white blouses and grubby desolate faces. It must have been them. She’d thought they were pure, but you just couldn’t tell. Not now. Her grandmother’s ramblings on the spirit world had been nothing more than campsite tales to delight and scare young children. But she did remember some of the old woman’s words. She raised her hands so and summoned up the incantation.

‘What are you doing?’ the elder of the two girls yelled down at her. ‘We have to get out of here. Now!’

Carmitha frowned in confusion. The girls both looked terrified, as well they might if they’d seen a tenth of what she had. Maybe they were untainted. But it if wasn’t them who wrecked the caravan . . .

She heard a chuckle, and whirled round. The man just appeared out of the tree standing on the other side of the road from the ditch. Literally out of it. Bark lines faded from his body to reveal the most curious green tunic. Arms of jade silk, a jacket of lime wool, big brass buttons down the front, and a ridiculous pointed felt hat sprouting a couple of white feathers.

‘Going somewhere, pretty ladies?’ He bowed deeply, and doffed his hat.

Carmitha blinked. His tunic really was green. But it shouldn’t have been, not in this light. ‘Ride!’ she called to the girls.

‘Oh, no,’ his voice sounded indignant, a host whose hospitality has proved inadequate. ‘Do stay.’

One of the small kittledove birds in the tree behind him took flight with an indignant squawk. Its leathery wings folded back, and it dived towards the stallion. Intense blue and purple sparks fizzed out of its tail, leaving a contrail of saffron smoke behind it. The tiny organic missile streaked past the stallion’s nose, and skewered into the ground with a wet thud.

Louise and Genevieve both reached out instinctively to pat and gentle the suddenly skittish stallion. Five more kittledoves were lined up on the pine’s branches, their twittering stilled.

‘In fact, I insist you stay,’ the green man said, and smiled charmingly.

‘Let the girls go,’ Carmitha told him calmly. ‘They’re only children.’

His eyes lingered on Louise. ‘But growing up so splendidly. Don’t you agree?’

Louise stiffened.

Carmitha was about to argue, maybe even plead. But then she saw four more people marching down the road from the farmhouse and the fight went out of her. Taking to her heels would do no good. She’d seen what the white fireballs could do to flesh and bone. It was going to be bad enough without adding to the pain.

‘Sorry, girls,’ she said lamely.

Louise gave her a flicker of a smile. She looked at the green man. ‘Touch me, peasant, and my fiancé will make you eat your own balls.’

Genevieve twisted round in astonishment to study her sister. Then she grinned weakly. Louise winked at her. Paper defiance, but it felt wonderful.

The green man chortled. ‘Dearie me, and I thought you were a fine young lady.’

‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ she told him icily.

‘I will enjoy teaching you some respect. I will personally see to it that your possession takes a good many days.’

Louise glanced briefly in the direction of the four men from the farmhouse who were now standing beside the placid cob. ‘Are you quite sure you have mustered sufficient forces? I don’t want you to be too frightened of me.’

The green man’s laboured smile vanished altogether, as did his debonair manner. ‘Know what, bitch? I’m going to make you watch while I fuck your little sister in half.’

Louise flinched, whitening.

‘I believe this has gone far enough.’ It was one of the men who’d arrived from the farm. He walked towards the green man.

Louise noticed how his legs bowed outward, making his shoulders rock slightly from side to side as he walked. But he was handsome, she acknowledged, with his dark skin and wavy jet-black hair tied back in a tiny ponytail. Rugged; backed up by a muscular build. He couldn’t have been more than about twenty, or twenty-one – the same age as Joshua. His dark-blue jacket was dreadfully old-fashioned, it had long tails which came to a point just behind his knees. He wore it over a yellow waistcoat, and a white silk shirt that had a tiny turn-down collar complemented with a black ruffled tie. Strange apparel, but elegant, too.

‘What’s your problem, boy?’ the green man asked, scornfully.

‘Is that not apparent, sir? I find it difficult to see how even a gentleman of your tenor can bring it upon himself to threaten three frightened ladies.’

The green man’s mouth split into a wide smile. ‘Oh you do, do you?’ White fire speared out of his fingers. It struck the newcomer’s blue jacket, and flared wide into clawing braids. He stood calmly as the coils of incandescence scrabbled ineffectively across him, as if he wore an overcoat of impervious glass.

Unperturbed by his failure, the green man swung a fist. It didn’t connect. His opponent ducked back with surprising speed. A fist slammed into the side of the green man’s torso. Three ribs shattered from the enhanced blow. He had to exert some of his own energistic strength to stave off the pain, and repair the physical damage. ‘Fuck,’ he spat, shocked by this inexplicable recalcitrance on the part of someone who was supposed to be a comrade. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

‘I would have thought that obvious, sir,’ the other said behind raised fists. ‘I am defending the honour of these ladies.’

‘I don’t believe this,’ the green man exclaimed. ‘Look, let’s just get them possessed, and forget it. OK? Sorry I mouthed off. But that girl has the Devil’s own tongue.’

‘No, sir, I will not forget your threat to the child. Our Lord may have deemed me unworthy to join Him in Heaven. But still I count myself as more than a beast who would commit rapine upon such a delicate flower.’

‘Delicate . . . You have got to be fucking joking.’

‘Never, sir.’

The green man threw his hands in the air. He turned to the other three who had accompanied his opponent from the farm. ‘Come on, together we can boil his crazy brain and send him back to the beyond. Or maybe you can ignore them pleading to be let back into the world,’ he added significantly.

The three men exchanged an uneasy glance.

‘You may indeed best me,’ the man in the blue jacket said. ‘But if I have to return to that accursed nowhere, I will take at least one of you with me, possibly more. So come then, who will it be?’

‘I don’t need any of this,’ one of the three muttered. He pushed his way past the other two, and started to walk down the road toward the town.

The man in the blue jacket gave the remaining two an enquiring look. Both of them shook their heads, and set off down the road.

‘What is it with you?’ the green man shouted furiously.

‘I believe that is a rhetorical question.’

‘OK, so who the hell are you?’

For a moment his handsome face faltered in its resolution. Pain burned in his eyes. ‘They called me Titreano, once,’ he whispered.

‘OK, Titreano. It’s your party. For now. But when Quinn Dexter catches up with you, it’s going to be the morning after like you’ve never fucking believed.’

He turned on a heel, and stalked off along the road.

Carmitha finally remembered to breathe again. ‘Oh my God!’ Her knees gave out, and she sat down fast. ‘I thought I was dead.’

Titreano smiled graciously. ‘You would not have been killed. What they bring is something far worse.’

‘Like what?’

‘Possession.’

She gave him a long mistrustful stare. ‘And you’re one of them.’

‘To my shame, my lady, I am.’

Carmitha didn’t know what the hell to believe.

‘Please, sir?’ Genevieve asked. ‘What should we do now? Where can Louise and I go?’

Louise patted Gen’s hands in caution. This Titreano was one of the devils after all, no matter how friendly he appeared to be.

‘I do not know this place,’ Titreano said. ‘But I would advise against yonder town.’

‘We know that,’ Genevieve said spryly.

Titreano smiled up at her. ‘Indeed you do. And what is your name, little one?’

‘Genevieve. And this is my sister, Louise. We’re Kavanaghs, you know.’

Carmitha groaned, and rolled her eyes. ‘Christ, that’s all I need right now,’ she mumbled.

Louise gave her a puzzled frown.

‘I regret I have not heard of your family,’ Titreano said in what sounded like sincere regret. ‘But from your pride, I venture it is a great one.’

‘We own a lot of Kesteven between us,’ Genevieve said. She was beginning to like this man. He’d stood up to the horrors, and he was polite. Not many grown-ups were polite to her, they never seemed to have the time to talk at all. He was very well-spoken, too.

‘Kesteven?’ Titreano said. ‘Now that is a name I do know. I believe that it is an area of Lincolnshire. Am I correct?’

‘Back on Earth, yes,’ Louise said.

‘Back on Earth,’ Titreano repeated incredulously. He glanced over at Duke, then switched to Duchess. ‘Exactly what is this world?’

‘Norfolk. It’s an English-ethnic planet.’

‘The majority,’ Carmitha said.

Louise frowned again. Whatever was wrong with the Romany woman?

Titreano closed his eyes, as if he felt some deep pain. ‘I sailed upon oceans, and I thought no challenge could be greater,’ he said faintly. ‘And now men sail the void between stars. Oh, how I remember them. The constellations burning so bright at night. How could I ever have known? God’s creation has a majesty which lays men bare at his feet.’

‘You were a sailor?’ Louise asked uncertainly.

‘Yes, my lady Louise. I had the honour to serve my king thus.’

‘King? There’s no royal family in the Earth’s English state any more.’

Titreano slowly opened his eyes, revealing only sadness. ‘No king?’

‘No. But our Mountbatten family are descended from British royalty. The Prince guards our constitution.’

‘So nobility has not yet been overthrown by darkness. Ah well, I should be content.’

‘How come you didn’t know about old England?’ Genevieve asked. ‘I mean, you knew about Kesteven being a part of it.’

‘What year is this, little one?’

Genevieve considered protesting about being called ‘little one’, but he didn’t seem to mean it in a nasty way. ‘Year 102 since settlement. But those are Norfolk years; they’re four Earth years long. So back on Earth it’s 2611.’

‘2611 years since Our Lord was born,’ Titreano said in awe. ‘Dear Heaven. So long? Though the torment I endured felt as if it were eternal.’

‘What torment?’ Genevieve asked with innocent curiosity.

‘The torment all us damned souls face after they die, little one.’

Genevieve’s jaw dropped, her mouth forming a wide O.

‘You’ve been dead?’ Louise asked, not believing a word of it.

‘Yes, lady Louise. I was dead, for over eight hundred years.’

‘That’s what you meant by possession?’ Carmitha said.

‘Yes, my lady,’ he said gravely.

Carmitha pinched the top of her nose, wrinkling her brow. ‘And how, exactly, did you come back?’

‘I do not know, except a way was opened into this body’s heart.’

‘You mean that’s not your body?’

‘No. This is a mortal man by the name of Eamon Goodwin, though I now wear my own form above his. I hear him crying inside me.’ He fixed Carmitha with a steady eye. ‘That is why the others pursue you. There are millions of souls lost in the torment of beyond. All seek living bodies so they may breathe again.’

‘Us?’ Genevieve squeaked.

‘Yes, little one. You. I’m sorry.’

‘Look, this is all very interesting,’ Carmitha said. ‘Complete drivel, but interesting. However, just in case you haven’t caught hold, right now we are drowning in deep shit. I don’t know what you freaks really are, possessed zombies or something nice and simple like xenocs with psychic powers. But when that green bastard reaches Colsterworth he’s going to be coming back with a lot of friends. I’ve got to unhitch my horse, and we three’ – her gesture took in the sisters – ‘have got to be long gone.’ She arched an eyebrow. ‘Right, Miss Kavanagh?’

‘Yes,’ Louise nodded.

Titreano glanced at the passive cob, then the stallion. ‘If you are serious in your intent, you should travel together in your caravan. None of you has a saddle, and this mighty beast has the look of Hercules about him. I’ll wager he can maintain a steady pace for many hours.’

‘Brilliant,’ Carmitha snorted. She hopped down onto the hard-packed dirt of the road, and slapped the side of her ruined caravan. ‘We’ll just wait here for a wheelwright to come along, shall we?’

Titreano smiled. He walked over to the ditch where the wheel had fallen in.

Carmitha’s next acidic phrase died unspoken as he righted the wheel and pushed it (one handed!) up out of the ditch, treating it as though it was a child’s hoop. The wheel was five feet in diameter, and made of good, heavy tythorn wood. Three strong men would struggle to lift it between them.

‘My God.’ She wasn’t sure if she should be thankful or horrified at such a demonstration. If all of them were like him, then hope had deserted Norfolk long ago.

Titreano reached the caravan, and bent down.

‘You’re not going to . . .’

He lifted it by the front corner; two, three feet off the road. Carmitha watched as the broken axle slowly straightened itself. The splintered fracture in the middle blurred, then for a brief moment the wood appeared to run like a liquid. It solidified. And the axle was whole again.

Titreano jemmied the wheel back on to the bearing.

‘What are you?’ Carmitha whispered weakly.

‘I have already explained, my lady,’ Titreano said. ‘What I can never do is bring you to believe what I am. That must come of its own accord, as God wills.’

He went over to the stallion, and held his arms up. ‘Come on, little one, down you come.’

Genevieve hesitated.

‘Go on,’ Louise said quietly. Plainly, if Titreano had wanted to harm them, he would have done it by now. The more she saw of these strange people, the more her heart blackened. What could possibly fight such power?

Genevieve smiled scampishly, and swung a leg over the stallion. She slithered down his flank into Titreano’s grip.

‘Thank you,’ she said as he put her down. ‘And thank you for helping us, too.’

‘How could I not? I may be damned, but I am not devoid of honour.’

Louise got most of the way down the stallion before she accepted his steadying hand. She managed a fast, embarrassed grin of thanks.

‘I’m sore all over,’ Genevieve complained, hands rubbing her bottom.

‘Where to?’ Louise asked Carmitha.

‘I’m not sure,’ the Romany replied. ‘There should be a lot of my folk in the caves above Holbeach. We always gather there if there’s any kind of trouble abroad. You can hold those caves for a long time; they’re high in the cliffs, not easy to reach.’

‘It would be a short siege this time, I fear,’ Titreano said.

‘You got a better idea?’ she snapped back.

‘You cannot stay on this island, not if you wish to escape possession. Does this world have ships?’

‘Some,’ Louise said.

‘Then you should try to buy passage.’

‘To go where?’ Carmitha asked. ‘If your kind really are after bodies, exactly where would be safe?’

‘That would depend on how swiftly your leaders rally. There will be war, many dreadful battles. There can be nothing less. Both our kinds are fighting for their very existence.’

‘Then we must go to Norwich, the capital,’ Louise said decisively. ‘We must warn the government.’

‘Norwich is five thousand miles away,’ Carmitha said. ‘A ship would take weeks.’

‘We can’t hide here and do nothing.’

‘I’m not risking myself on some foolhardy errand, girl. Fat lot of good you precious landowners will be, anyway. What has Norfolk got which can fight off the likes of him.’ She waved a hand towards Titreano.

‘The Confederation Navy squadron is still here,’ Louise said, her voice raised now. ‘They have fabulous weapons.’

‘Of mass destruction. How’s that going to help people who have been possessed? We need to break the possession, not slaughter the afflicted.’

They glared at each other.

‘There’s an aeroambulance based at Bytham,’ Genevieve said brightly. ‘That could reach Norwich in five hours.’

Louise and Carmitha stared at her. Then Louise broke into a grin, and kissed her sister. ‘Now who’s the clever one?’

Genevieve smiled round pertly. Titreano made a face at her, and she giggled.

Carmitha glanced down the road. ‘Bytham’s about a seven-hour journey from here. Assuming we don’t run into any more problems.’

‘We won’t,’ Genevieve said. She took hold of Titreano’s hand. ‘Not with you with us.’

He grinned half-heartedly. ‘I . . .’

‘You’re not going to leave us alone?’ a suddenly stricken Genevieve asked.

‘Of course not, little one.’

‘That’s that, then.’

Carmitha shook her head. ‘I must be bloody mad even thinking of doing this. Louise, tether your horse to the caravan.’

Louise did as she was told. Carmitha climbed back up on the caravan, regarding it suspiciously as she put her weight on the driver’s seat. ‘How long is that repair going to last for?’

‘I’m not quite sure,’ Titreano said apologetically. He helped Genevieve up beside Carmitha, then hoisted himself up.

When Louise clambered up, the narrow seat was cramped. She was pressed against Titreano, and not quite sure how she should react to such proximity. If only it were Joshua, she thought wistfully.

Carmitha flicked the reins, and Olivier started forward at an easy trot.

Genevieve folded her arms in satisfaction, and cocked her head to look up at Titreano. ‘Did you help us at Cricklade as well?’

‘How’s that, little one?’

‘One of the possessed was trying to stop us from riding away,’ Louise said. ‘She was hit by white fire. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.’

‘No, lady Louise. It was not I.’

Louise settled back into the hard seat, unhappy the mystery hadn’t been solved. But then by today’s standards it was one of the lesser problems confronting her.

Olivier trotted on down the road as Duke finally disappeared below the wolds. Behind the caravan, more of Colsterworth’s buildings had started to burn.

*

Guyana’s naval spaceport was a standard hollow sphere of girders, almost two kilometres in diameter. Like a globular silver-white mushroom on a very thin stalk, it stuck out of the asteroid’s rotation axis; the massive magnetic bearings on the end of the connecting spindle allowed it to remain stationary while the colossal rock rolled along its orbital track. The surface was built up from circular docking-bays linked together by a filigree of struts and transit tubes. Tanks, generators, crew stations, environmental maintenance machinery, and shark-fin thermo-dump panels were jumbled together in the gaps between bays, apparently without reference to any overall design logic.

Narrow rivers of twinkling star-specks looped around it all, twining in elaborate, interlocked figure-eights. The rivers had a current, their points of light drifting in the same direction at the same speed; cargo tugs, personnel commuters, and MSVs, firing their reaction drives to maintain the precise vectors fed to them by traffic control. Ombey’s code three defence alert had stirred the spaceport into frantic activity for the second time in twenty-four hours. But this time instead of preparing to receive a single craft, frigates and battlecruisers were departing. Every few minutes one of the big spherical Royal Kulu Navy ships would launch from its docking-bay, rising through the traffic lanes of smaller support craft with an arc-bright glare of secondary fusion drives. They were racing for higher orbits, each with a different inclination, Strategic Defence Command positioning them so they englobed the entire planet, giving full interception coverage out to a million kilometres. If any unidentified ship emerged from a ZTT jump within that region, it would be engaged within a maximum of fifteen seconds.

Amid the departing warships a lone navy flyer rose from the spaceport. A flattened egg-shape fuselage of dark blue-grey silicolithium-composite, fifty metres long, fifteen wide. Coherent magnetic fields wrapped it in a warm golden glow of captured solar wind particles. Ion thrusters fired, manoeuvring it away from the big frigates. Then the fusion tube in the tail ignited, pushing it down towards the planet seventy-five thousand kilometres below.

The one-gee acceleration sucked Ralph Hiltch gently back into his seat, making the floor stand to the vertical. On the seat next to him, his flight bag rolled over once to lie in the crook of the cushioning.

‘This vector will get us to Pasto spaceport in sixty-three minutes,’ Cathal Fitzgerald datavised from the pilot’s seat.

‘Thanks,’ Ralph replied. He widened the channel to include the two G66 troopers. ‘I’d like you all to access the briefing that Skark gave me. This kind of information could be critical, and we need all the breaks we can get around here.’

That earned him a grin and a wave from Dean Folan, a noncommittal grimace from Will Danza. They were both sitting on the other side of the aisle. The sixty-seater cabin seemed deserted with just the four of them using it.

None of his little team had complained or refused to go. Privately he’d made it quite clear they could pull out without any indiscipline action being entered on their file. But they’d all agreed, with varying degrees of enthusiasm – even Dean, who had the best excuse of all. He’d been in surgery for seven hours last night, the asteroid’s Navy clinic had to rebuild sixty per cent of his arm. The boosted musculature, ruined by the hits he’d taken in Lalonde’s jungle, had to be completely replaced with fresh artificial tissue, along with various blood vessels, skin, and nerves. The repair was still wrapped in a green sheath of medical nanonic packaging. But he was looking forward to levelling the score, he’d said cheerfully.

Ralph closed his eyes and let the briefing invade his mind, neural nanonics tabulating it into a sharply defined iconographic matrix. Details of the Xingu continent: a four and a half million square kilometre sprawl in the northern hemisphere, roughly diamond-shaped, with a long mountainous ridge of land extending out from its southern corner. The ridge crossed the equator; and Ombey’s broad tropical zones meant the entire continent was an ideal farming region, with the one exception of the semi-desert occupying the centre. So far only two-fifths of it was inhabited, but with a population of seventy million it was the second most prosperous continent after Esparta, where the capital, Atherstone, was situated.

After Xingu came the embassy trio, Jacob Tremarco, Savion Kerwin, and Angeline Gallagher. Their career files contained nothing exceptional, they were all regular Kulu Foreign Office staffers, loyal, boring, bureaucrats. Visuals, family histories, medical reports. It was all there, and none of it particularly useful apart from the images. Ralph stored them in a neural nanonics memory cell, and spliced them with a general characteristics recognition program. He hadn’t forgotten that strange image-shifting ability the sequestrated had demonstrated back on Lalonde. The recognition program might give him a slight edge if one of them attempted a disguise, though he didn’t hold out much hope.

The most promising part of the data package was the series of measures Admiral Farquar and Leonard DeVille, Xingu’s Home Office Minister, had implemented to quarantine the continent and trace the embassy trio. All civil traffic was being systematically shut down. Search programs were being loaded into the continent’s data cores, watching for a trail of unexplained temporary glitches in processors and power circuits. Public area security monitor cameras had been given the visual pattern of the trio, and police patrols were also being briefed.

Maybe they’d get lucky, Ralph thought. Lalonde was a backward colony on the arse edge of nowhere, without any modern communications or much in the way of civil authority. But Ombey was part of the Kingdom, the society he’d sworn to defend with his life if need be. Because, years ago at university, when he’d discreetly been offered a commission in the agency, he’d considered Kulu a worthwhile society. The richest in the Confederation outside Edenism. Strong economically, and militarily; a technology leader. It had a judicial system which kept the average citizen safe on the streets, and was even reasonably fair by modern standards. Medical care was socialized. Most people had jobs. Admittedly, ruled by the Saldanas, it was hardly the most democratic of systems, but then short of the Edenist Consensus few democratic societies were truly representative. And there were a lot of planets which didn’t even pretend to be egalitarian. So he’d swallowed any niggling self-suspicion of radicalism, and agreed to serve his King until his death.

What he’d seen of the galaxy had only served to strengthen his conviction that he’d done the right thing in taking the oath. The Kingdom was a civilized place compared to most, its citizens were entitled to lead their lives without interference. And if that meant the ESA occasionally having to get its hands dirty, then so be it, as far as Ralph was concerned. A society worth having is worth protecting.

And thanks to its own nature, Ombey should definitely be able to cope better than Lalonde, although the very systems which made it more able also gave the enemy a greater opportunity to spread its subversion. The virus carriers had been slow to travel on Lalonde. Here they would suffer no such restrictions.

Cathal Fitzgerald cut the flyer’s fusion drive when they were two hundred kilometres above Xingu. Gravity took over, pulling the flyer down. Its magnetic field expanded, applying subtle pressures to the tenuous gases pushing against the fuselage. Buoyant at the centre of a sparkling cushion of ions, the flyer banked to starboard, and began a gentle glide-spiral down towards the spaceport below.

They were a hundred and fifty kilometres high when the flight computer datavised a priority secure signal from Roche Skark into Ralph’s neural nanonics.

‘We might have a problem developing,’ the ESA director told him. ‘A civil passenger flight from Pasto to Atherstone is having trouble with its electronic systems, nothing critical but the glitches are constant. I’d like to bring you in on the Privy Council Security Committee to advise.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ralph acknowledged. The datavise broadened to a security level one sensenviron conference. Ralph appeared to be sitting at an oval table in a plain white bubble room with walls at an indeterminate distance.

Admiral Farquar was sitting at the head of the table, with Roche Skark and Jannike Dermot flanking him. Ralph’s neural nanonics identified the other three people present. Next to the ISA Director was Commander Deborah Unwin, head of Ombey’s strategic-defence network; Ryle Thorne, Ombey’s national Home Office Minister, was placed next to her. Ralph found himself with Roche Skark on one side and Leonard DeVille on the other.

‘The plane is seven minutes from Atherstone,’ Deborah Unwin said. ‘We have to make a decision.’

‘What is the plane’s current status?’ Ralph asked.

‘The pilot was instructed to turn back to Pasto by my flight controllers as part of the quarantine procedures. And that’s when he reported his difficulties. He says he’ll be endangering the passengers if he has to fly all the way back to Pasto. And if it’s a genuine malfunction he will be.’

‘We can hardly go around using our SD platforms on civil aircraft just because they have a dodgy processor,’ Ryle Thorne said.

‘On the contrary, sir,’ Ralph said. ‘In this situation we have to maintain a policy of guilty until proven innocent. You cannot allow that plane to land in the capital, not under any circumstances. Not now.’

‘If he has to fly back to Xingu he may well kill everyone on board,’ the minister protested. ‘The plane could be downed in the ocean.’

‘Atherstone has a high proportion of military bases in the surrounding district,’ Admiral Farquar said. ‘If necessary the plane can simply sit on a landing pad surrounded by marines until we work out a satisfactory method of detecting if the virus is present.’

‘Is the pilot using his neural nanonics to communicate with flight control?’ Ralph asked.

‘Yes,’ Deborah said.

‘OK, then it’s a reasonable assumption that he’s not been sequestrated. If you can guarantee a landing pad can be guarded securely, I say use it. But the plane must remain sealed until we find out what’s happened to the embassy trio.’

‘Good enough,’ Admiral Farquar said.

‘I’ll put the marines at Sapcoat base on active status as of now,’ Deborah said. ‘That’s over a hundred kilometres from Atherstone. The plane can reach it easily enough.’

‘A hundred kilometres is a safe enough distance,’ Ryle Thorne said smoothly.

Ralph didn’t like the minister’s attitude; he seemed to be treating this as if it was a minor natural incident, like a hurricane or earthquake. But then the minister had to go back to his constituents every five years and convince them he was acting in their best interests. Ordering SD platforms to fire on their fellow citizens might be hard to explain away in public relations terms. That was one of the reasons the royal Saldanas had a parliament to advise them. An insulating layer around the blame. Elected politicians were always culpable and replaceable.

‘I’d also suggest that once the plane’s landed you use an orbital sensor satellite to mount a permanent observation on it,’ Ralph said. ‘Just in case there’s any attempt to break out. That way we can use the SD platforms as a last resort; sterilize the entire area.’

‘That strikes me as somewhat excessive,’ Ryle Thorne said, with elaborate politeness.

‘Again, no, sir. On Lalonde the enemy were able to use their electronic-warfare capability to interfere with the LDC’s observation satellite from the ground, they fuzzed the images to quite a degree. I’d say this fall-back option is the least we should be doing.’

‘Ralph was brought in because of his experience in combating the virus,’ Roche Skark said, smiling at the minister. ‘He got off Lalonde precisely because he instigated these kind of protective measures.’

Ryle Thorne gave a short nod.

‘Pity he didn’t protect us from the virus,’ Jannike muttered. Except in a sensenviron context nothing was really sotto voce; all utterances were deliberate.

Ralph glanced over at her, but the computer-synthesized image of her face gave nothing away.

*

Chapman Adkinson was getting mighty tired of the continual stream of datavises he was receiving from flight control. Worried, too. He wasn’t dealing with civil flight control at Atherstone any more, they’d gone off-line eight minutes ago. Military protocols were being enforced now, the whole planet’s traffic control was being routed through the Royal Navy operations centre on Guyana. And they were none too sympathetic to his condition.

Esparta was rolling by below the plane; one of the lush national parks which surrounded the capital. A jungle scarred only by the occasional Roman-straight motorway and dachas belonging to the aristocracy. The ocean was five minutes behind them.

His neural nanonics were accessing the external sensors, but the visual image was only being analysed in secondary mode, mainly to back up the inertial-guidance system which he no longer wholly trusted. He was concentrating on schematics of the plane’s systems, twenty per cent of the on-board processors were suffering from random drop-outs. Some had come back on-line after a few seconds, others remained dead. The diagnostic programs he ran simply couldn’t pinpoint the problem. And, even more disturbing, in the last fifteen minutes he’d been experiencing spikes and reductions in the power circuits.

That was what had made him argue with the military controllers. Processor glitches were an acceptable menace, there was so much redundancy built into the plane’s electronic architecture it could survive an almost total shutdown; but power loss was in a different hazard category altogether. Chapman Adkinson had already decided that if they did try and force him to fly back over the ocean he was going to ditch there and then, and to hell with the penalties they’d load into his licence. The biohazard in Xingu couldn’t be that lethal, surely?

‘Chapman, stand by for some updated landing coordinates,’ Guyana’s flight controller datavised. ‘We’re diverting you.’

‘Where to?’ Chapman asked sceptically.

‘Sapcoat base. They’re prepping a clean reception area for you. Looks like the passengers are going to have to stay on board for a while once you’re down.’

‘As long as we get down.’

The coordinates came through, and Chapman fed them directly into the flight computer. Twelve minutes to Sapcoat. He could accept that. The plane banked gently to port, and began to curve away from the city which lay somewhere beyond the horizon’s black and silver heat shimmer.

It was a signal for the glitches to quadruple. Circuits began to drop out at a frightening rate. A quarter of the systems schematic flicked to a daunting black, leaving only ghostly colourless outlines where functional hardware had been a moment before. Power to the two rear starboard compressors failed completely. He could hear the high-pitched background whine deepening as the blades slowed. The flight computer’s compensation program went primary, but too many control surfaces had shut down for it to be truly effective.

‘Mayday, mayday,’ Chapman datavised. Even his primary transmitter had failed. Back-up processors were activated. The fuselage began to vibrate and judder, as the plane was ploughing through a patch of choppy air.

‘What is it?’ flight control asked.

‘Losing power and height. Systems failure rate increasing. Shit! I just lost the tail rudder databus.’ He datavised an emergency code into the flight computer. A silvery piston slid out of the horseshoe console in front of him, a dull chrome-red pistol grip on the end. It reached his lap, and rotated silently through ninety degrees. Chapman grabbed it. Manual control. Christ, I’ve never used one outside of Aviation Authority simulations!

The datavise bandwidth to the flight computer started to shrink. He prioritized the schematic to display absolute essentials. Holographic displays on the console came alive, duplicating the information.

‘Find me a flat patch of land – now, damn it!’ How he was going to bring the plane down in VTOL configuration with both the starboard compressors out wasn’t something he wanted to think about. Maybe a motorway, and use it like a runway?

‘Request denied.’

‘What?’

‘You may not land anywhere but the authorized coordinate.’

‘Fuck you! We’re going to crash.’

‘Sorry, Chapman, you cannot land anywhere outside Sapcoat.’

‘I can’t reach Sapcoat.’ His datavised control linkage to the flight computer began to fail. The pistol grip shifted slightly in his hand, and he felt the plane tilt in tandem.

Careful! he told himself. A firm pressure on the grip, and the nose began to edge back. The holographic horizon graphic showed he was still in a shallow dive. More pressure, and the descent rate slowed.

The door into the cockpit slid open. Chapman Adkinson was wired too tight to care. It was supposed to be codelocked, but the way hardware was crashing . . .

‘Why have you altered course?’

Chapman shot a quick glance over his shoulder. The guy was dressed in a cheap suit, five years out of date. He wasn’t just calm, he was serene. Incredible! He must feel the plane’s buffeting.

‘Technical problem,’ Chapman managed to gasp. ‘We’re putting down at the nearest landing pad that can handle an emergency.’ The pistol grip was fighting his every movement. And now the holographic displays were wobbling. He wasn’t sure if he could trust them any more. ‘Get back into your seat now, feller.’

The man simply walked up behind the pilot’s chair, and slid his head over Chapman’s shoulder, peering out of the narrow curving windscreen. ‘Where is Atherstone?’

‘Look, pal—’ Pain lanced deep into his thigh. Chapman grunted roughly at the shock of it. The man’s left index finger was resting lightly on his leg, a small circle of his uniform’s trouser fabric was burning around it.

Chapman swatted at the small blue flames, eyes blinking away sudden tears. His thigh muscle was smarting abominably.

‘Where is Atherstone?’ the man repeated. ‘I have to go there.’

Chapman found his calmness more unnerving than the plane’s failure. ‘Listen, I wasn’t joking when I said we had technical problems. We’re going to be lucky if we make it over this sodding jungle. Forget about Atherstone.’

‘I will hurt you again, harder this time. And I will keep on hurting you until you take me to Atherstone.’

I’m being hijacked! The realization was as staggering as it was improbable. Chapman gagged at the man. ‘You have got to be kidding!’

‘No joke, Captain. If you do not land in the capital, I will see to it you don’t land anywhere.’

‘Holy Christ.’

‘Atherstone. Now where is it?’

‘To the west somewhere. Christ, I’m not sure where. Inertial guidance has packed up.’

A mirthless smile appeared on the man’s face. ‘Then head west. It is a big city. I’m confident we’ll see it from this height.’

Chapman did nothing. Then winced as the man reached past him. He put his hand on the windscreen, palm flat. Horrifyingly deep white cracks splintered outward.

‘Atherstone.’ It was an order.

‘OK. Just take your goddam hand off that.’ The windscreen was artificial sapphire, for God’s sake. You couldn’t crack it by leaning on it. A neural nanonics status check showed him half his synaptic augmentation had crashed, and virtually all the memory cells had shut down. But there was enough capacity for a datavise. ‘Code F emergency,’ he shot at the flight computer. Followed by a small prayer that it hadn’t glitched completely yet.

‘ISA Duty Officer,’ came the response. ‘What’s happening?’

Chapman used the last of his neural nanonics’ capacity to issue a metabolic override, keeping his face perfectly composed. He must not betray the silent conversation by a twitch of emotion. ‘Attempted hijacking. And the plane’s falling apart around me.’

‘How many hijackers?’

‘Just one, I think. Can’t access the cabin cameras.’

‘What does he want?’

‘He says he wants to go to Atherstone.’

‘What sort of weapon is he using?’

‘Not sure. Nothing visible. Some kind of implant. Maybe a thermal induction field generator. He burnt my leg, and damaged the windscreen.’

‘Thank you. Hold, please.’

Like I can do something else, Chapman thought acidly. He flicked a curious glance at the man, who was still standing to one side of the chair. His face was as emotionless as Chapman’s.

The plane rocked alarmingly. Chapman tried to damp it down by swaying the pistol grip to compensate for the erratic motion. On a plane with fully responsive control surfaces it might have worked, here it just slewed the tail round. He noticed the nose had dropped a couple of degrees again.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, what’s so bloody important in Atherstone that you’ve got to pull this crazy stunt?’

‘People,’ the man said blandly.

Some of the man’s calmness was infiltrating Chapman’s own mind. He pulled back on the pistol grip, easing the nose up until they were level again. Nothing to it. At least there were no more systems dropping out, the malfunctions appeared to have plateaued. But landing would be a bitch.

‘Chapman,’ the ISA duty officer datavised. ‘Please try and give us a visual of the hijacker. It’s very important.’

‘I’m down to about two kilometres altitude here, seventy per cent of my systems have failed, and all you want is to see what he looks like?’

‘It will help us evaluate the situation.’

Chapman gave the man a sideways glance, loading the image into one of his remaining three functional memory cells. His datavise bit rate was now so low it took an entire second to relay the file.

Ralph Hiltch watched the pixels slowly clot together above the bubble room’s table. ‘Savion Kerwin,’ he said, unsurprised.

‘Without a doubt,’ Admiral Farquar acknowledged.

‘That plane left Pasto ninety minutes after their spaceplane landed,’ Jannike Dermot said. ‘They obviously intend to spread the virus as wide as possible.’

‘As I’ve been telling you,’ Roche Skark said. ‘Ralph, do you think he’s infected anyone else on the plane?’

‘Quite possibly, sir. The flight computer and Chapman’s neural nanonics are obviously being assaulted by a very powerful electronic-warfare field. It might be several of them acting in unison, or it could just be Savion Kerwin’s proximity to the electronic systems, after all the flight computer is housed below the cockpit decking. But we really can’t take the chance.’

‘Agreed,’ Admiral Farquar said.

Chapman Adkinson waited for fifteen seconds after he’d datavised the visual file. The crippled flight computer reported the communication channel was being maintained. Nothing happened, there was no update from the ISA officer.

A Royal Kulu Navy Reserve officer himself, Chapman knew of the response procedures for civil emergencies. Rule of thumb: the longer it took to come to a decision, the higher up the command structure the problem was being bumped. This one must be going right to the top. To the people authorized to make life-or-death decisions.

Intuition or just a crushing sense of doom, Chapman Adkinson started laughing gleefully.

The man turned to give him a strange look. ‘What?’

‘You’ll see, feller, soon enough. Tell me, are you the biohazard?’

‘Am I a—’

The X-ray laser struck the plane while it was still eighty kilometres away from Atherstone. Ombey’s low-orbit SD platform weapons could hit combat wasps while they were still two and a half thousand kilometres distant. The plane was a mere three hundred kilometres beneath the platform which Deborah Unwin activated. Oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the lower atmosphere simply cracked into their subatomic constituents as the X-ray punched through the air, a searing purple lightning bolt eighty kilometres long. At its tip, the plane detonated into an ionized fog which billowed out like a miniature neon cyclone. Scraps of flaming, highly radioactive wreckage rained down on the pristine jungle below.