Joshua howled at the flare of terrible pain as the pistol fell from his grip. No matter how vigorously he waved his arm the deadly white flame could not be dislodged from its grip around his fingers. Oily stinking smoke spouted out.

“Time to say goodbye to your life,” the smiling possessed said.

“Fuck you.”

He could hear the girls crying out behind him, the wails of their revulsion and horror. Shock was diminishing the pain in his hand slightly. He could feel the puke rising in his throat as more and more of his flesh charred. His whole right arm was stiffening. Somewhere behind his assailant a vast crowd of invisible people were whispering all at once. “No.” It wasn’t a coherent word, just a defiant grunt mangled by his contorted throat muscles. I will not submit to that. Never.

A cascade of water burst out of the corridor’s ceiling to the accompanying sound of a high-pitched siren. The edge of the lighting panels turned red and started to flash.

Shea was laughing with brittle hysteria as she withdrew her fist from the fire alarm panel. Dots of blood oozed up from her grazed knuckles. Joshua punched his own hand upwards, straight underneath a nozzle. He roared triumphantly. The white flame vanished in a gust of steam, and he collapsed down onto his knees, his whole body shaking violently.

The Arab regarded the three of them with a degree of aristocratic annoyance, as if any hint of defiance was unprecedented. Water splattered on his dark headgear, turning his robe translucent as it clung to his body.

Joshua raised his head against the icy torrent to snarl at his enemy. His right hand was dead now; a supreme crush of coldness had devoured his wrist. A few spittles of vomit emerged from his mouth before he managed to growl: “Okay, shithead, my turn.”

The Arab frowned as Joshua reached into a pocket with his left hand and brought out Horst Elwes’s small crucifix. He thrust it forwards.

“Holy Father, Lord of Heaven and the mortal world, in humility and obedience, I do ask Your aid in this act of sanctification, through Jesus the Christ who walked among us to know our failings, grant me Your blessing in this task.”

“But I am a Sunni Muslim,” the bemused Arab said.

“Eh?”

“A Muslim. I have no belief in your false Jewish prophet.” He raised his arms, palms upwards. The deluge of water from the nozzles turned to snow. Every flake stuck to Joshua’s ship-suit, smearing him in a coat of slush. Most of his skin was numb now.

“But I believe,” Joshua ground out through vibrating teeth. And did. The revelation was as shocking as the cold and the pain. But he’d come to this moment of pure clarity through reason and ordeal. All he knew, all he’d seen, all he’d done; it spoke to him that there was order in the universe. Reality was too complex for chance evolution.

Medieval prophets were a convenient lie, but something had made sense out of the chaos which existed before time began. Something started time itself flowing.

“My Lord God, look upon this servant of Yours before me, fallen to a misguided and unclean spirit.”

“Misguided?” The Arab glowered, trickles of static electricity crawling up his robes. “You brain-dead infidel! Allah is the only true—oh shit .”

The serjeant fired, aiming for the Arab’s head.

Joshua drooped limply onto the floor. “That’s always how religious arguments end, isn’t it?” He was only dimly conscious of the serjeant dragging him out of the downpour. His neural nanonics came back on line, and immediately started erecting axon blockades. It was a different kind of numbness than the snow had brought, less severe. The serjeant wrapped a medical nanonic package around his hand. A stimulant program coaxed Joshua’s brain back to full alertness. He blinked up at the three faces peering down at him. Kole and Shea were clinging together, both of them in a shambles, drenched and stupefied. The serjeant had taken a bad pounding, deep scorch marks crisscrossed its body, all-too-human blood was bubbling out from crusted wounds.

Joshua climbed slowly to his feet. He wanted to smile reassuringly at the girls, but the will just wasn’t there. “Are you okay?” he asked the serjeant.

“I’m mobile.”

“Good. What about you two, any damage?”

Shea shook her head timidly, Kole was still sobbing.

“Thanks for helping,” he said to Shea. “That was fast thinking. I don’t know what I would have done without the water. It was all a little bit too close for comfort. But we’re through the worst now.”

“Joshua,” the serjeant said. “Dahybi says that three of the Capone Organization’s warships have just arrived.”

Seven Edenists in full body armour were guarding the docking ledge departure lounge. Monica was tremendously glad to see them. Along with Samuel, she’d been covering their retreat from the Terminal Terminus, no easy duty. There had been three encounters with the possessed on the way, and the shapeshifting magicians terrified her. Nerves and neural nanonics were hyped to the maximum. Never once had she given them the opportunity to surrender or back off. Locate and shoot, that was the way to do it. And she noticed that for all his worthiness and respect for life, Samuel was wired pretty much the same.

The lighting panels were flickering and dimming as the group rushed across the lounge towards the airlock door and the waiting crew bus outside. Monica waited until the airlock hatch slid shut before taking her combat programs off line. She flicked the machine gun’s safety catch on, and slowly pulled off her chameleon suit hood. The bus’s cool air felt gloriously refreshing as it gusted over her sweat-soaked hair.

“Well, that was easy,” she said.

The bus was rolling towards the Hoya , the last voidhawk left on the ledge. Nothing else moved on the shelf of smooth dark rock.

“Unfortunately, you might be right,” Samuel said. He was bent over the unconscious form of Adok Dala, checking the boy with a sensor from a medical block. “Capone’s ships are here.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry. The Duida Consensus has dispatched a squadron of voidhawks to support us. We are in little physical danger.”

An inane impulse made Monica stare out through the bus’s window in search of the Organization ships. She could barely make out the non-rotational spaceport, an eclipsed crescent with the funereal red mist of the disk swirling around its edges. “We’re a long way from New California. Is this another invasion?”

“No, there are only three ships.”

“Then why . . . Oh, God, you don’t think he’s looking for Mzu as well?”

“It is the most obvious possibility.”

They reached the voidhawk, and the bus extended its airlock tube over the upper hull. Despite their situation, Monica glanced around curiously once she was on board. The crew toroid wasn’t that much different from an Adamist starship’s life-support capsule in terms of technology; it was a lot roomier, though. Samuel led her around the central corridor to the bridge and introduced her to Captain Niveu.

“My thanks to Hoya ,” she said, remembering her etiquette.

“Our pleasure, you have been performing a difficult job under extreme circumstances.”

“Tell me about it. What’s happening with the Capone ships?”

“They are accelerating down into the disk, though they have made no threatening moves. The squadron from the Duida habitats is here, we’re moving out to join them now. What happens next depends on the Capone ships.”

“We’re under way?” Monica asked. The gravity field was rock steady.

“Yes.”

“Are there any electronic sensors I can access?”

“Certainly.”

Monica’s neural nanonics received a datavise from the bridge’s bitek processor array. Hoya was already sliding up through the fringes of the disk, like a bird emerging from a rain cloud. Purple and green symbols outlined the three Capone Organization ships, half a million kilometres away, and heading in towards Ayacucho at a steady third of a gravity. The squadron of voidhawks was clustered together just outside the top of the disk.