I can’t distinguish individual people,she told rocio. The window’s radiation shielding is an effective block against precision scanning. I am aware of their emotions, but from this distance they’ve blurred together. All I know is, several people are definitely in there.

And Mickey Pileggi is still calling for assistance. Kiera must be one of those you sense.

Pran Soo activated a microwave laser, and aligned it on the base of the Hilton. The beam would slice along the side of the tower, filleting the structural girders so the entire bottom floor would tumble away into interplanetary space. Targeting systems designated the requisite cutting pattern.

A hellhawk rose above the asteroid’s flat horizon behind Pran Soo, its hull crawling with vivid lines of electrical energy feeding a comprehensive armament of beam weapons.

Etchells,pran soo exclaimed in surprise.

Two masers punctured her thick polyp hull, penetrating right into the central core of organs.

Emmet finally managed to shift the tactical display’s magnification, enhancing the zone around Monterey itself. He was just in time to watch one of the symbols drift away from the Hilton tower. The other symbol moved in closer to the hotel. Its data tag identifying it as the Stryla, which he knew was possessed by Etchells. But he didn’t have a clue whose side it was on, even if the hellhawks were taking sides.

He activated the close-range defence systems and ordered them to target the hellhawk. The only option, given SD’s hellhawk liaison guy was now a mound of ash in the ruined control centre. Etchells was an unknown factor, capable of killing possessed humans. And Al was heading down into the Hilton.

Stryla ’s symbol sprouted a small batch of alphanumerics, telling Emmet it was datavising directly to the asteroid’s SD command. He hunted round his program menus, desperately trying to route the message through to his office.

“Disengage your targeting lock,” Etchells said.

“No way,” Emmet told him. “I want you a thousand kilometres away from this asteroid; you have thirty seconds to begin accelerating or I’ll fire.”

“Listen, bollockbrain. I have fifty combat wasps in my launch cradles, all with innumerable submunitions, all fitted with fusion warheads. Right now, they are all armed, and activated by a deadman code. You cannot train enough beam weapons on me to vaporise me and the missiles instantaneously. If you fire, they will detonate. I’m not sure if that much megatonnage will crack Monterey open or not. Would you like to find out?”

Emmet’s hands clamped round his head in an agony of frustration. I am not cut out for any of this shit. I want to go home.

What would Al do? It wasn’t such a good question. He had the horrible feeling that if you put Al in a Mexican stand-off he would shoot.

“You know, I might just,” he said stubbornly. “I’ve had a real shitty time today, and the Confederation Navy is on the way to make it worse.”

“I know the feeling,” Etchells said. “But I’m really not a threat to you.”

“Then what the hell are you doing there?”

“I have to ask someone a question. Once I’ve done that, I’ll leave. Give me five minutes, then you can start acting tough again. Deal?”

The expensive designer gloss had departed from the lounge in the Nixon suite. Mickey’s ill-judged attempt to beachhead the place had resulted in streamers of white fire slashing round in chaotic violence, and Kiera’s counter-attack had only made it worse. The lights were out, a tangle of broken pipes and cables hung down out of the ceiling, the furniture had burned enthusiastically and was now reduced to smoking embers. Torrents of energistic power poured upon the doors by both sides had turned them and the surrounding walls into a fantastic tract of heterogeneous crystal; long encrustations of quartz sprouted in jumbled antagonism, each branch fighting its neighbour like a forest of avaricious jewels. They writhed fluidly each time another burst of power doused them, growing slightly longer and more entwined.

Kiera worried that the continual assaults on the door were a diversion. She had two of her goons patrolling the other rooms, searching for the Organization gangsters grouping together on the other side of the suite’s walls and especially the ceiling. So far they hadn’t tried to break through, but it would be only a matter of time. Nobody was stupid enough to keep on trying the same route in when they were so thoroughly blocked. There was also the ammunition question. She was going to run out eventually.

One thing she’d made quite sure of was keeping in contact with her deputies. Hudson Proctor could use his affinity to talk to the remaining Valisk survivors positioned through the asteroid, who in turn kept in touch with their recruits through the net. Communications remained the key to any revolution.

Unfortunately, it didn’t guarantee success.

“Just how many people have declared for us?” Kiera asked.

Hudson Proctor took the figures he knew of, and added quite a few. No way was he about to deliver that much bad news by himself. “About a thousand in the asteroid.”

“What about the fleet?” she demanded. “How many ships?”

“Jull reported several dozen were heading for low orbit before Emmet’s crew wiped him out. But they wrecked the SD centre. Capone can’t use the platforms to intimidate anybody, in space or on the planet.”

“Where the hell is Luigi?”

“I don’t know, he hasn’t checked in.”

“Damn it, didn’t anyone listen to me? Luigi’s part was crucial, the fleet must follow us down to the planet. Capone is going to get us all slung back into the beyond.”

Hudson had heard the speech countless times already. He said nothing.

“I should have gone for the control centre, not Capone,” Kiera said. She looked at the crystalline bulwark, which undulated rapidly, twinkling with emerald light. One of her goons fired his machine gun through a gap where the doors used to be. “Maybe we should try and get up to the defence section, there’s bound to be an auxiliary control room.”

“We’ll never get past Pileggi,” Hudson said. “There’s too many of them.”

“Only if we make a break for it through the front.” Kiera tilted her head up to stare at the ceiling. “I’ll bet we can . . .” She trailed off as a silver-white starship with glowing engine nacelles rose ponderously into view outside the big window wall.

“Oh shit,” Hudson murmured. “That’s the Varrad. And Pran Soo is not your biggest fan.”

“Talk to her, find out what she wants.”

He licked his lips and began a frown which never really had time to form. “I can’t—oh.”

The hellhawk’s fantasy image burst. It dropped out of sight, rolling as it went. Another one glided up to replace it, a dark bird-shape with red-flecked reptile scales. Hudson grinned in relief. “Etchells.”

“Ask him if he can hit Pileggi with his lasers.”

“Right.” Hudson concentrated. “Uh, he says he has a question for you.”

Kiera’s processor block bleeped. Not taking her eyes off Hudson, she slipped it out of her jacket pocket. “Yes?”

“I need to know something,” Etchells said. “Do you believe the Navy mission to the Orion Nebula is a danger to us?”

“Of course I do, that’s why you and the others have been refitted with auxiliary fusion generators. It has to be investigated.”

“We agree on that, then.”

“Good. Now target the Organization grunts holding me in here, and I’ll eliminate Capone. With him out of the way I can assign antimatter warships to the flight. The threat can be dealt with properly.”

“Twenty-seven voidhawks have swallowed away from their patrol orbits without clearance. That means they have found an alternative source of nutrient fluid. Even if you gain control of the Organization, you will lose them.”