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  ‘Then I guess you’ll have to just hold it in for a while,’ said Sifra, and the two men laughed.

  ‘At least take the damn cuffs off!’ she screamed after them as they departed, still chuckling.

  She could already feel a mild pressure growing in her bladder. If she had to pee on their damn couch, it would serve them right. But then again, she was the one who’d have to sit in it all the way to Redstone.

  She found a part of her hoping Bash took a dump right there on his own couch. It would just serve the two of them the hell right if they had to clean up his shit. Literally.

  On the other hand, it was clear she was going to be left here alone with the zombies for quite some time. She almost couldn’t believe either of the two men could be so dumb . . .

  ‘Oh, but they are,’ she said quietly to herself, through gritted teeth.

  She twisted her head around until she could just about see the two bead-zombies in their own couches. Didn’t they need to pee? Somehow she had never thought to wonder about that.

  She rolled her shoulders to relax the muscles, then slowed her breathing until she could focus more clearly.

  Then she went to work.

  Focusing was always the hardest part of this kind of work. A single break in concentration could ruin everything. Through her implants, she studied the flow of data between the pair of zombies and the dropship control systems to which they had now been slaved for the duration of the journey.

  There was, she knew, no way a dropship’s auto-control was up to that kind of job. But hacking the two zombies was still going to take a great deal of effort, and not a little time. It looked, however, as if time were something she would have in abundance.

  She painstakingly tested each potential point of entry, one after another. Buckled into the couch and with her arms cuffed behind her back, it was far from easy to get a line of sight on the two zombies, to see if either of them reacted in any way to her remote prodding. Soon her neck was starting to throb like a bitch.

  She took a break after a couple of hours that were rewarded with little success, and tried not to let self-doubt and despair swallow her up. Then she got back to work, studying and exploring each potential backdoor into either the dropship or the zombies themselves.

  It wasn’t long before she felt a band of tightness across her forehead that heralded an oncoming migraine. Respond, damn you. She kicked her feet against the couch in frustration, but it made no difference. No matter what she tried, it just wasn’t working.

  She glanced around at the zombies, and . . .

  Had she imagined it when she saw the hand of one of them twitch?

  Of course she had.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the throbbing of her muscles and the dryness of her throat.

  Maybe she hadn’t imagined it.

  She restructured various custom routines she had created in order to probe the potential points of entry she had identified, keeping her gaze focused on that zombie in particular.

  This time, she saw it. Definitely a twitch.

  Megan rocked her head from side to side to try and alleviate the painful kinks that had developed in her neck and shoulders. Her wrists were sore and chafed from the cuffs they had left on her.

  She modified another routine and set it loose. The zombie twitched again, then shifted suddenly in its seat, the fingers of both its hands spasming in a kind of rippling motion.

  Megan let herself fall back with a laugh of triumph, all her pain and despair suddenly forgotten. She still wasn’t home free yet, not by a long shot; and it wasn’t long before elation gave way to fatigue. She had slept barely at all on that cold basement floor.

  She closed her eyes, intending to rest them for just a minute or two, and fell immediately asleep.

  She began to dream of the events following her return from the disastrous Beauregard expedition twelve years earlier. She had used the money she got from Sifra and Tarrant to rent an apartment in an upmarket district of one of Corkscrew’s principal cities, and soon discovered there were easy ways of attaining the mental oblivion she now craved.

  She slowly immersed herself in the city’s street culture; the highly narcotic drug known as sans de sezi was everywhere on Corkscrew, which was hardly surprising since the medusa trees from which it was derived grew wild there. At certain times of the year, if the weather was just right, these trees released their orange spores in clouds ready to be gathered and processed before being smuggled off-world.

  The streets were littered with the casualties of the drug, but this made no difference to her. She soon became something of a connoisseur of the orange spore, and before long a considerable portion of her fortune had thus evaporated.

  But, in the end, even those hazy visions produced by the drug hadn’t been quite enough to wipe out the memory of what had happened on her trip out to the Wanderer, and consequently Megan had slowly, albeit reluctantly, found her way back to the real world. She had even managed to re-establish some kind of career for herself as a machine-head pilot, but this time taking advantage of her growing inside knowledge of the routes by which sans de sezi found its way off Corkscrew. Before long she had found a way to gain employment through men like Kazim who had an intimate knowledge of the underworld and its workings.

  In this way, she eventually found herself a new life. It was one that led her to believe she might finally lead a normal and happy existence, but her discovery regarding the approaching Swarm had put an end to all that.

  Now on the Liberia, she dreamed that Bash was talking to her as they walked along one of Ladested’s broad avenues, back on Kjæregrønnested.

  Megan Jacinth, as I live and breathe, he began in surprise, gazing at her sideways.

  She stared back at him in wonder, wondering how he could be here, and able to speak to her. Then she remembered that it was a dream, and not actually real.

  I came back for you, Bash, she said. Maybe not for all the right reasons, but I did, as soon as I knew you were still alive. A breeze whipped at her hair. But you don’t know how much it broke my heart when I saw you lying there in that basement. You didn’t even realize I was there.

  Didn’t I? He chuckled. Well, I’ve been away from the old place for a while. He shook his head as they walked on. But I figured it was time to come and pay you a visit, in view of the way things are shaping up for the future. He glanced at her with a grin. The things I’ve seen, baby, you just wouldn’t believe.

  She began to have the uncanny sense that this was not, in fact, a dream after all.

  I’ve missed you so badly, she said, a lump forming in her throat. I’ve been so alone all these years since I returned – so alone you can’t even imagine.

  I’m always with you, baby, he said, coming to a sudden halt. She did too, and he reached out with one hand to brush the hair away from her face. I’m here right now, aren’t I?

  I know you are, she said, looking up at him. She realized she was crying. Just not the way I need you to be.

  His expression grew troubled, and he touched the side of his head with trembling fingers. It’s like having to share a house with an unwanted guest. Do you understand? I used to hide away where it couldn’t find me, deep inside. But nowadays I can’t even come and visit that house too often, except for when I get to sneak in and say hello, like now.

  Are you talking about the Wanderer? she asked, with a horrible chill. Her dream muscles were rigid with despair. I’ll find someone who can fix you, I swear I will.

  He brought his hand back down and folded it around one of hers. You don’t understand, he said, shaking his head. There’s nobody that can fix me. I know that.

  His smile faded, his gaze becoming blank and vacant even as the intelligence faded from his eyes. She thought of candles guttering out in an abandoned house.

  Wait! she cried, grabbing hold of him. Stay with me. Please.

  I’ll be there when you really need me, baby, she heard him say, as if from the far side of the
universe. You just take care of yourself until then.

  She woke with a start, to find Luiz unbuckling her restraints.

  ‘Time for you to take your pee,’ he said. ‘We brought you something to eat as well.’ He waved a hand at some food on a cardboard tray set next to her couch. The two bead-zombies had been given their guns back, and had them pointing at her.

  ‘Dumb and Dumber here are going to keep an eye on you,’ he said. ‘And, while you’re at it, take your buddy to the head as well, before he shits himself or something. I am right in thinking he’d do that, if we just left him there long enough?’

  ’You tell me,’ she said. ‘I’m not the one who’s kept him locked up in a fucking dungeon.’

  ‘You keep talking as smart as you do; see where it gets you,’ said Luiz, finishing with the restraints. ‘Turn over on your side so I can get your cuffs.’

  Megan did as she was told and felt her wrists suddenly coming free. She tried to rub at them, but hissed between her teeth from the pain. It felt as if the skin had been scraped raw.

  ‘Now go get yourself to the head,’ said Luiz. ‘And don’t take too long in case I have to come looking.’

  She got up out of the couch, feeling her muscles stretching painfully, and then waited while Luiz also released Bash. Once he was out of his couch, she took hold of Bash and led him, not without difficulty, out through the cockpit hatch.

  ‘Down the far end,’ Luiz shouted after her. ‘Second cubby on the left.’

  Fuck you too, she thought, and wondered if it had been Luiz’s job to clean up Bash before her arrival on Avilon. If so, he’d been doing a very poor job of it.

  She pushed Bash up against a bulkhead next to the head and stared into his empty, unseeing eyes. ‘Were you inside my head just a minute ago, Bash? Or did I really just dream all of that?’

  It hadn’t felt like a dream. It had felt real.

  But if it had been real, that meant there was at least some part of Bash that was still aware of everything happening around him.

  The implications chilled her. If that really was the case, then Bash had remained locked in the prison of his own body, unable to communicate with the outside world . . . for more than a decade.

  NINE

  Gabrielle

  Gabrielle had hardly slept during the night, and when she woke the next morning, on the Eve of Ascension, Cassanas was still avoiding her gaze. When Gabrielle asked to dress herself, the old woman’s only response was a mumbled nod.

  An hour later, Gabrielle made her way up through the tiered decks, trailed by several of Karl’s guards, until she came to an observation deck on the very uppermost level of the great barge. More guards under Karl’s command waited in an anteroom as she leaned against a railing, looking out towards the distant horizon, a view coloured slightly by the containment field keeping a breathable atmosphere around the deck itself.

  In all of her life, Gabrielle had only rarely set foot outside Port Gabriel. Most of her existence had been spent within the strict confines of the People’s Palace, and she now felt almost dizzy from the sight of so much sky. She gazed at canopy trees rising out of the frozen soil of the nearby eastern shore, the tiny black dots of one-wings circling beneath huge frond-like branches that overshadowed the ground beneath.

  The Ka River was wide enough here for the western shore to have become little more than a dark line on the far horizon. The nearer shore was lined with the primitive-looking sealed domes and glittering biomes of small towns that looked like they had hardly changed since the days of the pioneers.

  She glanced aft to see the rest of the barges strung out along the river behind them. Dios lay a hundred kilometres further downriver, yet she found it easy to imagine that, if she squinted hard enough, she could see the steep cliffs against which the Ship of the Covenant rested.

  She remembered the excitement in her youth when she had once looked forward to this day – and the slowly building dread that had come to replace it. These two emotions merged and clashed in her thoughts. She had always wanted to visit Dios, as so many pilgrims did, but to do so under the present circumstances would be at the cost of her life.

  She fanned her fingers, then stirred them through the air to activate the Tabernacle. A patch of air before her darkened, becoming opaque to her view.

  She conjured up a real-time image of the Ship of the Covenant. Bridges were constructed all around the hull of the ancient craft, interconnecting with ramps and platforms built up the cliff face on either side. A number of buildings, part research establishment and part religious retreat, had been constructed around that portion of the ship that rested on the ground, and all of these in turn were surrounded by constantly patrolled walls and guarded gates. The Demarchy was extremely keen to protect its investment.

  She heard a noise behind her, and guessed she had company. The image before her rippled and faded, and she turned to see Karl Petrova standing just inside the entrance to the observation deck.

  He closed the glass doors behind him and came towards her. ‘Are you ready?’ he asked, his voice kept low. ‘It’s very nearly time.’

  She swallowed hard. ‘Surely the banquet is still hours away?’

  ‘This is the last chance we’ll have to speak to each other until afterwards,’ he explained, reaching out to tidy a lock of her hair that had come loose. ‘Everything’s in place.’

  She thought of that vial of poison, and felt a thrill of terror mixed with excitement lancing through her. ‘I won’t fail you,’ she said, so quietly that she could barely be heard above the crashing of the waves on the nearby shore. He reached out and caressed her waist. ‘You know that I love you, don’t you?’

  Gabrielle took a step back from Karl, eyes widening as she glanced instinctively towards the doors behind him. They were both hidden by curtains from the direct view of his guards, but still . . .

  ‘Karl,’ she warned, ‘if anyone heard what you just said—’

  ‘But they didn’t,’ said Karl, his tone cool and confident, ‘and they won’t. You remember everything you have to do?’

  She nodded. ‘I remember,’ she said, her voice sounding stronger this time.

  ‘Say it again,’ he coaxed.

  She stared up at him. ‘I remember,’ she repeated, her tone almost defiant. Then: ‘I love you too, Karl – more than you can imagine.’

  He smiled at that, but again there was something unreadable in his eyes.

  TEN

  Gabrielle

  ‘To our Speaker-Elect,’ said Thijs, raising his glass high in a toast. Its contents sparkled, reflecting the flames of the fireplace that took up most of one wall of the Grand Barge’s banqueting hall.

  He then turned his gaze from the assembled dignitaries of the Demarchy towards Gabrielle herself. Their eyes met briefly before she looked quickly away.

  ‘To Gabrielle,’ confirmed Thijs, ‘on the eve of her Ascension.’

  More glasses were raised, their contents as dark and red as arterial blood. There were perhaps thirty men and women here altogether, arranged on either side of the long dining table carved from out of a canopy tree’s taproot. Gabrielle sat at the head of the table, able to feel, through her feet, the distant vibration of the powerful turbines as the barge carried them onwards.

  Semi-transparent glow-globes floated just beneath the ceiling, filling the room with a warm and pearly light. Tiny insect-like shapes occasionally flitted through the air – autonomous recording devices, nominally under Thijs’s control, but secretly slaved, she knew, to Karl’s command. Tonight, he would make sure they recorded nothing.

  Gabrielle nodded to Thijs in acknowledgement. ‘Hear, hear,’ said someone further down the table, their voice slurring.

  Thijs sat down again. This banquet for the Demarchy’s leading bureaucrats and politicians had been going on for nearly three hours now, yet the after-dinner speeches had still not come to an end.

  The first bout of speechmaking had come from a number of minor adjutants, ea
ch of them in turn summarizing the various technological benefits that the Demarchy of Uchida had acquired thanks to previous Ascensions. After them had come the lower-level bureaucrats, detailing the Demarchy’s continued happy relations with the Accord, while their equivalents from the security department had reported further on the Demarchy’s continued successes against both the River Concord States and the pockets of Freehold resistance still scattered amongst the higher peaks of the Montos de Frenezo range. After these had come the senior researchers from Dios, with a summary of the financial and military aid received from the Accord, and finally the senior security and bureaucracy, whose speeches consisted mostly of congratulations to everyone else for their part in keeping the Demarchy safe from its neighbours and its enemies for another twenty-one years.

  At last, just when it seemed that these interminable eulogies might go on for the rest of eternity, the remains of the dinner were cleared away by waiting staff, and the ceremonial wine was finally brought in. Gabrielle watched with sick fascination as the glasses around her were refreshed. She reached carefully into the folds of her gown, letting her fingers touch the device that would activate the neurotoxin, as if to remind herself she had not imagined last night’s conversation.

  When a glass of the poisoned wine was set before her, she stroked its stem with her thumb and forefinger, and forced herself to control her breathing. I will not panic. She reminded herself that Karl was just metres away, at the far end of a corridor leading to the banqueting hall. He was accompanied by twenty Demarchy troopers, whom he insisted were absolutely loyal to him.

  Just another few minutes, and they would finally be free.

  Thijs stood again, waiting for the conversation to die down.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, ‘Mer Gabrielle will be granted the privilege of communing directly with the Ship of the Covenant, as so many of her predecessors have done for nearly two centuries now. In return for this act of selflessness, the Demarchy and its benefactors in the Accord will benefit from a priceless cornucopia of scientific and technological wisdom.’