“Hey, what is this?”

“I’m trying to get you to relax, remember? You’re so tense.” Her fingers were moving in circles now, almost strumming his hot muscle cords.

“That’s good,” he admitted.

“I should really have some scented oils to do this properly.”

“You want I should try and dream some up?” He wasn’t too certain he could imagine smells the way he could shapes.

“No. Improvising can be fun, you never know what you might discover. Turn over, and get rid of your shirt.”

Al rolled over, yawning heavily. He rested his chin on his hands as Jezzibella began to move her fingertips along his spine.

“I dunno what I hate most,” Al said. “Retreating from Kursk, or admitting how right that shitty slob Leroy was.”

“Kursk was a strategic withdrawal.”

“Running away is running away, doll. Don’t matter how you dress it up.”

“I think I’ve found something that might help you with Arnstadt.”

“What’s that?”

She leaned over to the bedside cabinet and picked up a small processor block, tapping the keyboard. “I only saw this recording today. Leroy should have brought it to me earlier. Apparently it’s all over the Confederation. We got it from one of the outsystem delegations that arrived to plead with you.”

The holoscreen switched from the gym to showing Kiera Salter lounging on her boulder.

“Yep, that certainly perks me up,” Al said cheerfully.

Jezzibella slapped his rump. “Just you behave, Al Capone. Forget her tits, listen to what she’s saying.”

He listened to the enticing words.

“She’s actually rather good,” Jezzibella said. “Especially considering it’s AV only, no naughty sensory activants to hammer home the message. I could have done it better, of course, but then I’m a professional. But that recording is pulling in dissatisfied kids from every asteroid settlement that ever received a copy. They call it Deadnight.”

“So? Valisk is one of those frigging freaky habitat places. She’s hardly gonna be a threat to us no matter how many people go there.”

“It’s how they get there which interests me. Kiera has managed to take over Valisk’s blackhawks, they call them hellhawks.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. And all they’re doing is ferrying idiot kids to the habitat. She is facing the same problem as all the possessed asteroid settlements. They’re not the kinds of places you want to spend eternity in. My guess is that she’s trying to beef up Valisk’s population so the ones already there don’t push to land on a planet. It makes sense. If they did move, Kiera wouldn’t be top dog anymore.”

“So? I never said she was dumb.”

“Exactly. She’s organized. Not on the scale you are, but she’s smart, she understands politics. She’d make an excellent ally. We can supply her with people a lot faster than she can acquire them through clandestine flights. And in return, she loans us a couple of squadrons of these hellhawks, which the fleet desperately needs. They’d soon put a stop to the Confederation’s stealth attacks.”

“Damn!” He shuffled around inside the cage of her legs to see her poised above him, hands on her hips, content smile on her lips. “That’s good, Jez. No it ain’t, it’s fucking brilliant. Hell, you don’t need me, you could run this Organization by yourself.”

“Don’t be silly. I can’t do what you do to me, not solitaire.”

He growled hungrily and reached for the robe. Marie Skibbow’s golden face smiled down on them as more and more of their clothing vanished, some into thin air, some into torn strips.

•   •   •

The First Admiral waited until Captain Khanna and Admiral Lalwani seated themselves in front of his desk, then datavised the desktop processor for a security level one sensenviron conference. Six people were waiting around the oval table in the featureless white bubble room which formed around him. Directly opposite Samual Aleksandrovich was the Confederation Assembly President, Olton Haaker, with his chief aide Jeeta Anwar next to him; the Kulu ambassador, Sir Maurice Hall, was on her left, accompanied by Lord Elliot, a junior minister from the Kulu Foreign Office; the Edenist ambassador, Cayeaux, and Dr Gilmore took the remaining two chairs.

“This isn’t quite our usual situation briefing today, Admiral,” President Haaker said. “The Kulu Kingdom has made a formal request for military aid.”

Samual Aleksandrovich knew his face was showing a grimace of surprise, his sensenviron image, however, retained a more dignified composure. “I had no idea any of the Kingdom worlds were under threat.”

“We are not facing any new developments, Admiral,” Sir Maurice said. “The Royal Navy is proving most effective in protecting our worlds from any strikes by possessed starships. Even Valisk’s hellhawks have stopped swallowing into our systems to peddle their damnable Deadnight subversion. And our planetary forces have contained all the incursions quite successfully. With the sorry exception of Mortonridge, of course. Which is why we are requesting your cooperation and assistance. We intend to mount a liberation operation, and free the citizens who have been possessed.”

“Impossible,” Samual said. “We have no viable method of purging a body of its possessor. Dr Gilmore.”

“Unfortunately, the First Admiral is correct,” the navy scientist said. “As we have found, forcing a returned soul to relinquish a body it has captured is extremely difficult.”

“Not if they are placed in zero-tau,” Lord Elliot said.

“But there are over two million people on Mortonridge,” Samual said. “You can’t put that many into zero-tau.”

“Why not? It’s only a question of scale.”

“You’d need . . .” Samual trailed off as various tactical programs went primary in his neural nanonics.

“The help of the Confederation Navy,” Lord Elliot concluded. “Exactly. We need to move a large number of ground troops and matériel to Ombey. You have transport and assault starships which aren’t really involved with enforcing the civil starflight quarantine. We’d like them to be reassigned to the campaign. The combined resources of our own military forces, our allies, and the Confederation Navy ought to be sufficient to liberate Mortonridge.”

“Ground troops?”

“We will initially be providing the Kingdom with half a million bitek constructs,” Ambassador Cayeaux said. “They should be able to restrain individual possessed, and force them into a zero-tau pod. Their deployment will insure the loss of human life is kept to a minimum.”

“You are going to help the Kingdom?” Samual couldn’t be bothered to filter his surprise out of the question. But . . . the Edenists and the Kingdom allied! At one level he was pleased, prejudice can be abandoned if the incentive is great enough. What a pity it had to be this, though.

“Yes.”

“I see.”

“The Edenist constructs will have to be backed up by a considerable number of regular soldiers to hold the ground they take,” Sir Maurice said. “We would also like you to assign two brigades of Confederation Marines to the campaign.”

“I’ve no doubt your tactical evaluations have convinced you about the plausibility of this liberation,” Samual said. “But I must go on record as opposing it, and certainly I do not wish to devote my forces to what will ultimately prove a futile venture. If this kind of combined effort is to be made, it should at least be directed at a worthwhile target.”

“His Majesty has said he will go to any lengths to free his subjects from the suffering being inflicted on them,” Lord Elliot said.

“Does his obligation only extend to the living?”

“Admiral!” Haaker warned.

“I apologize. However you must appreciate that I have a responsibility to the Confederation worlds as a whole.”

“Which so far you have demonstrated perfectly.”

“So far?”

“Admiral, you know the status quo within the Confederation cannot be maintained indefinitely,” Jeeta Anwar said. “We cannot afford it.”