“Thanks, Emmet, I appreciate you being straight with me. Mickey, Patricia, what’s the word among the soldiers?”

“They’re getting jumpy, Al,” Patricia said. “No two ways about it. There’s been enough time for what that bitch Kiera said to start registering. The Organization’s put us on top, but that makes us a target. We know we can’t take over another planet again, New California is all we’ve got. A lot of them want to go down there.”

“But we’re holding them, Al,” Mickey said. His nervous tic was palpitating away. “I don’t take no shit from any of my people. They’re loyal. You made us, Al, we’ll stay with you.”

His blind enthusiasm made Al smile faintly. “I ain’t asking no one to commit suicide for me, Mickey. They wouldn’t do it anyway; they all came out of the beyond, remember. They ain’t gonna go back just because I ask nice. Party’s over, guys. We had fun for a while, but we’ve reached the end of the road. I got a bum rap from history once, I ain’t having that again. This time people are gonna say I did the best for everyone. They’re gonna show me some genuine respect.”

“How?” Patricia asked.

“Because we’re going out in style. It’s gonna be me who stops the slaughter. I’m gonna make the Navy an offer they can’t refuse.”

The Ilex was one of the voidhawks who had taken up an observation position two million kilometres out from New California in the wake of the mass hellhawk defection from the Organization. The Yosemite Consensus had soon found out about Almaden. Hellhawks had been delivering non-possessed survivors to the habitats, a repatriation deal for rebuilding the asteroid’s nutrient refinery, they said. Consensus hadn’t finished reviewing the implications of that yet; it seemed unlikely that they could maintain the machinery for more than a few years. However, that the hellhawks so actively sought to avoid combat was a particularly welcome development. Capone’s actual motives for allowing and even assisting such an action were highly questionable.

Whatever the true reason, it left Yosemite with an excellent opportunity to re-establish its observation of New California and the Organization fleet. Ilex had been assigned to review the low-orbit SD network in preparation for the arrival of Admiral Kolhammer’s attack force. They deployed their spyglobes and waited for them to complete the long fall down below geostationary orbit. There was still an hour to go before the little sensors started to return useful data when a communication beam from Monterey was aligned on them.

“I wanna talk to the captain,” Al Capone said.

Auster immediately informed the Yosemite habitats. Their Consensus came together, reviewing the situation through his eyes and ears. “This is Captain Auster. What can I do for you, Mr Capone?”

Al grinned, and turned to someone out of view. “Hey, you got that on the dime, they’re as prissy as the Limeys. Okay, Auster, we all reckon that the Navy is due here any minute now. Right?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny such an event.”

“Bullshit, they’re on their way.”

“What do you want, Mr Capone?”

“I need to talk to the guy in charge, the admiral. And I need to do that before he starts shooting. Can you fix that for me?”

“What do you wish to talk to him about?”

“Hey, that’s between me and him, pal. Now can you set that up, or do you wanna sit back and let a whole load of people get slaughtered? I thought that was against your religion or something.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Illustrious emerged in the centre of the voidhawk defence sphere formation, 300,000 kilometres above New California. Admiral Kolhammer waited impatiently for the tactical display, cursing the delay while the warship’s sensors deployed.

Lieutenant Commander Kynea, the voidhawk liaison staff leader, called out: “Sir, local voidhawks have received a communications request. Al Capone wants to talk to you.”

It wasn’t something Motela Kolhammer was expecting, but the probability was always there. Capone didn’t have to be a genius to work out where the attack force was heading after Arnstat.

The tactical display was coming on line, supplemented by information from the Yosemite voidhawks. The news that the hellhawks had departed was extremely welcome. Though even without them New California had a prodigious defence network; its strength had determined the ultimate size of the attack force. So far, none of the platforms had fired.

“I’ll listen to him,” Kolhammer said. “But I want our deployment to continue as planned.”

“Aye, sir.”

The Illustrious aligned one of its communication dishes on Monterey.

“So you’re the admiral, huh?” Al Capone asked once the link was established.

“Admiral Kolhammer, Confederation Navy. Currently commanding the attack force emerging above New California.”

“I guess I must have frightened you people, huh?”

“Guess again.”

“I don’t think so. I got it right first time, pal. There’s one fuck of a lot of you. That means you’re running scared.”

“Interpret our emergence how you choose. It is of no relevance to me. Did you wish to surrender?”

“Blunt son of a bitch, ain’t you?”

“I’ve been called many things, that’s one of the milder observations.”

“You killed a lot of people on Arnstat, Admiral.”

“No. You did. You backed us into a position where we had no alternative but to respond appropriately.”

Al grinned brightly. “Like I said, I frightened you. That’s a big tough decision your Assembly must have made, sacrifice an entire planet just to whack me. Taxpayers ain’t gonna like that, no sir. You’re supposed to be protecting them. That’s your duty.”

“I’m very aware of my duty to the Confederation, Mr Capone. I don’t need you to tell me that.”

“Have it whatever way you want. Thing is, I’ve got an offer for you.”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re gonna shoot off a shitload of artillery at us, right. I mean, it’s gonna be like the fucking Alamo in here.”

“You’ll discover my intentions soon enough.”

“We’ve got over a million people up here, more if you count all us poor lost souls; but certainly a million flesh-and-blood bodies. Plenty of women and children, too. I can prove that; there’s stuff my technical guys can send you, lists and records and such. Do you really want to kill them all?”

“No, I do not wish to kill anybody.”

“That’s good, we can talk about that.”

“Talk quickly.”

“Pretty simple; I ain’t gonna jive-ass you. You’ve already decided you’ll give up New California just to get rid of me. Well, I gotta tell you, I’m real flattered. That’s one hell of a price to put on a single guy’s head, you know. So in return, I’m gonna do you a favour. I’ll send all my people down to the planet, all the possessed here in Monterey and the other asteroids, everyone in the fleet, the whole goddamn lot of them. Then when we’re all down on the ground, we’ll take the planet away. This way nobody gets hurt, and you get back all the hostages I’m keeping up here. I’ll even throw in the antimatter as well. How does that grab you, Admiral?”

“It grabs me as fundamentally unbelievable.”

“Hey shit-for-brains, you want a bloodbath that bad and maybe I’ll just give the order to butcher all the hostages right now, before your weapons ever reach us.”

“No. Please don’t. I apologise. What I should have asked was, why? Why are you making this offer?”

Al leaned in closer to the sensor transmitting his image to the Illustrious. “Look, I’m just trying to do what’s right here. You’re going to kill people. Maybe I pushed you into that, maybe not. But now it’s here, I’m trying to stop it, I ain’t no goddamn maniac. So I offer you a way out that leaves both of us looking good.”

“Let me get this straight, you are proposing to ferry every possessed down to the planet, disarm your fleet and hand back the asteroids?”