The intimation was profoundly shocking: that somehow Dariat had achieved a degree of control over the habitat routines. But then Dariat had managed to block all Rubra’s attempts to gain access to his mind through affinity ever since that fateful day thirty years ago. Dariat, for all his massive imperfections, was unique.

Rubra reacted to the revelation by erecting safeguards all around his primary personality pattern; input filters which would scrutinize all the information reaching him for trojan viruses. He wasn’t certain exactly what Dariat was trying to achieve by interfering with the sub-routines, but he knew the man still blamed him for Anastasia Rigel’s death. Ultimately Dariat would try to extract his vengeance.

What remarkable determination. It actually rivalled his own.

Rubra hadn’t been so stimulated for decades. Maybe he could still negotiate with Dariat; after all, the man was not yet fifty, there was another half century of useful life left in him. And if they couldn’t come to an agreement, well . . . he could always be cloned. All Rubra needed for that was a single living cell.

With his mentality as secure as he could make it, he formed a succession of new orders. Again, they were different from anything which existed in the neural strata before; fresh patterns, a modified routing hierarchy, invisible to anyone accustomed to the standard thought routines. The clandestine command went out to every optically sensitive cell, every affinity-capable descendant, every servitor animal: find a match for Dariat’s visual image.

It took seven minutes. And it wasn’t quite what Rubra was expecting.

A number of the observation routines on the eighty-fifth floor of the Kandi starscraper had been tampered with. The Kandi was used mainly by the less wholesome of Valisk’s residents, which given the overall content of the population meant that the starscraper was just about the last resort for the real lowlife. It was in the apartment of Anders Bospoort, vice lord and semi-professional rapist, where the greatest anomaly was centred. One of the observation sub-routines had been altered to include a memory segment. Instead of observing the apartment, and feeding the processed image directly into a general event analysis routine it was simply substituting an old visualization of the rooms for the real-time picture.

Rubra solved the problem by wiping the old routine entirely and replacing it with a viable one. The apartment he was now looking around was a shambles, furniture out of place and smothered by every kind of male and female clothing, plates of half-eaten food discarded at random, empty bottles lying about. High-capacity Kulu Corporation processor blocks and dozens of technical encyclopedia fleks were piled up on the tables—not exactly Bospoort’s usual bedtime material.

With the restoration of true sight and sound came an olfactory sense; a stiff price to pay: the feculent stink in the apartment was dreadful. The reason for that was simple: Dariat’s obese corpse was lying slumped at the foot of the bed in the master bedroom. There was no sign of foul play, no bruising, no stab wounds, no energy beam charring. Whatever the cause, it had left an appallingly twisted grin scrawled across his chubby face. Rubra couldn’t help but think that Dariat had actually enjoyed dying.

Dariat was inordinately happy with his new, captive body. He had quite forgotten what it was like to be skinny; to move fast, to slither adroitly between the closing doors of a lift, to be able to wear proper clothes instead of a shabby toga. And youth, of course, that was another advantage. A more vital physique, lean and strong. That Horgan was only fifteen years old was of no consequence, the energistic power made up for everything. He chose the appearance of a twenty-one-year-old, a male in his physical prime, his dark skin smooth and glossy; hair worn thick, long, and jet-black. His clothes were white, simple cotton pantaloons and shirt, thin enough to show off the panther flex of muscles. Nothing as gross-out as Bospoort’s ridiculous macho frame which Ross Nash wore, but he’d certainly drawn the eye of several girls.

In fact, possession with all its glories was almost enough to make him renege on his task. Almost, but not quite. His agenda remained separate from the others’, for unlike them he wasn’t scared of death, of returning to the beyond. He believed in the spirituality Anastasia had preached, now as never before. The beyond was only part of the mystery of dying; God’s creativity was boundless, of course more continua existed, an after-afterlife.

He pondered this as he walked with his fellow possessors towards the Tacoul Tavern. The others were all desperately intent on their mission, and so humourless.

The Tacoul Tavern was a perfect microcosm of life in Valisk. Its once stylish black and silver crystalline interior was a form now abandoned even by designers of retro chic; its food came out of packages where once its cuisine was prepared by chefs in a five-star kitchen; its waitresses were really too old for the short skirts they wore; and its clientele neither questioned nor cared about its inexorable decline. Like most bars it tended to attract one type of customer; in this case it was the starship crews.

There were a couple dozen people seated at the various rock mushroom tables when Dariat followed Kiera Salter inside. She sauntered over to the bar and ordered a drink for herself. Two men offered to buy it for her. While the charade played out, Dariat chose a table by the door and studied the big room. They’d done well; five of the drinkers had the telltale indigo eyes of Rubra’s descendants, and all of them wore shipsuits with a silver star on the epaulet: blackhawk captains.

Dariat concentrated on the observation routines operating in the neural strata behind the tavern’s walls, floor, and ceiling. Abraham, Matkin, and Graci, who also possessed affinity-capable bodies, were doing the same thing; all four of them were sending out a multitude of subversive commands to isolate the room and everything which happened in it from Rubra’s principal personality.

He had taught them well. It took the foursome barely a minute to corrupt the simple routines, turning the Tacoul Tavern into a perceptual null zone. To complete the act, the muscle membrane door contracted quietly, its grey pumicelike surface becoming an intractable barrier, sealing everyone inside.

Kiera Salter stood up, dismissing her would-be suitors with a contemptuous gesture. When one of them rose and started to say something, she struck him casually, an openhanded slap across his temple. The blow sent him flailing backwards. He struck the polyp floor hard, yelling with pain. She laughed and blew him a kiss as he dabbed at the blood seeping from his nose. “No chance, lover boy.” The long leather purse in her hand morphed into a pump-action shotgun. She swung it around to point towards the startled patrons, and blew one of the ceiling’s flickering light globes to pieces.

Everyone ducked as splinters of pearl-white composite rained down. Several people were attempting to datavise emergency calls into the room’s net processor. Electronics were the first thing the possessed had disabled.

“Okay, people,” Kiera announced, with a grossly stressed American twang. “This is a stickup. Don’t nobody move, and shove your valuables in this here sack.”

Dariat sighed in contempt. It seemed altogether inappropriate that a complete bitch like Kiera should possess the body of such a physically sublime girl as Marie Skibbow. “There’s no need for all this,” he said. “We only came for the blackhawk captains. Let’s just keep focused on that, shall we?”

“Maybe there’s no need,” she said, “but there’s certainly plenty of want.”

“You know what, Kiera, you really are a complete asshole.”

“That so?” She flung a bolt of white fire at him.

Waitresses and customers alike shouted in alarm and dived for cover. Dariat just managed to deflect the bolt, thumping it aside with a fist he imagined as a fat table tennis bat. The white fire bounced about enthusiastically, careering off tables and chairs. But not before the strike gave him a vicious electric shock, jangling all the nerves in his arm.

“Give the lectures a rest, Dariat,” Kiera said. “We do what we’re driven to do.”

“Nobody drove you to do that. It hurt.”

“Oh, get real, you warped slob. You’d enjoy yourself a lot more if you didn’t have that morals bug stuffed so far up your arse.”

Klaus Schiller and Matkin sniggered at his discomfort.

“You’re screwing up everything with this childishness,” Dariat said. “If we are to acquire the blackhawks we cannot afford your indiscipline. The Lord Tarrug is making you dance to his tune. Contain yourself, listen to your inner music.”

She shouldered the shotgun and levelled an annoyed finger at him. “One more word of that New Age bullshit, and I swear I’ll take your head clean off. We brought you along so that you could deal with the habitat personality, that’s all. I’m the one who lays down our goals. I have concrete bloody policies; policies which are going to help us come up trumps. Policies with attitude. What the fuck have you got to offer us, slob? Chop away at the habitat’s floor for a century until we find this Rubra’s brain, then stamp on it. Is that it? Is that your big, useful plan?”

“No,” he said with wooden calm. “I keep telling you, Rubra cannot be defeated by physical means. This policy you have for taking over the habitat population isn’t going to work until we’ve dealt with him. I think we’re making a mistake with the blackhawks; not even their physical power can help us beat him. And if we start taking them over, we risk drawing attention to ourselves.”

“As Allah wills,” Matkin muttered.

“But don’t you see?” Dariat appealed to him. “If we concentrate on annihilating Rubra and possessing the neural strata, then we can achieve anything. We’ll be like gods.”

“That is close to blasphemy, son,” Abraham Canaan said. “You should have a little more care in what you say.”

“Shit. Look, godlike, okay? The point is—”

“The point , Dariat,” Kiera said, aligning the shotgun on him for emphasis, “is that you are steaming for vengeance. Don’t try and plead otherwise, because you are even insane enough to kill yourself in order to achieve it. We know what we are doing, we are multiplying our numbers to protect ourselves. If you don’t wish to do that, then perhaps you need a little more time in the beyond to set your mind straight.”

Even as he gathered himself to argue, he realized he’d lost. He could see the blank expressions hardening around the other possessed, while his mind simultaneously perceived their emotions chilling. Weak fools. They really didn’t care about anything other than the now. They were animals. But animals whose help he would ultimately need.

Kiera had won again, just as she had when she insisted on him proving his loyalty through self-sacrifice. The possessed looked to her for leadership, not him.

“All right,” Dariat said. “Have it your way.” For now.

“Thank you,” Kiera said with heavy irony. She grinned, and sauntered over to the first blackhawk captain.

During the altercation, the patrons of the Tacoul Tavern had been as quiet as people invariably become when total strangers are discussing your fate two metres in front of you. Now the discussion was over. Fate decided.

The waitresses squealed, huddling together at the bar. Seven of the starship personnel made a break for the closed muscle-membrane door. Five actually launched themselves at the possessed, wielding whatever came to hand: fission blades (which malfunctioned), broken bottles, nervejam sticks (also useless), and bare fists.

White fire flared in retaliation: globes aimed at knees and ankles, disabling and maiming; whip tendrils which coiled around legs like scalding manacles.

With their victims thrashing about on the floor, and the stink of burnt flesh in the air, the possessed closed in.

Rocio Condra had been trapped in the beyond for five centuries when the time of miracles came. An existence of madness, which he could only liken to the last moment of smothering being drawn out and out and out . . . And always in total darkness, silence, numbness. His life had replayed itself a million times, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

Then came the miracles, sensations leaking in from the universe outside. Cracks in the nothingness of the beyond which would open and shut in fractions of a second, akin to storm clouds of soot parting to let through the delicious golden sunlight of dawn. And every time, a single lost soul would fly into the blinding, deafening deluge of reality, out into freedom and beauty. Along with all the others left behind, Rocio would howl his frustration into the void. Then they would redouble their pleas and prayers and pledges to the obdurate, indifferent living, offering them salvation and ennoblement if they would just help.

Perhaps such promises actually worked. More and more of the cracks were appearing, so many that they had become a torment in their own right. To know there was a route out, and yet always denied.

Except now. This time . . . This time the glory arose all around Rocio Condra so loud and bright it nearly overwhelmed him. Furled with the torrent was someone crying for help, for the agony to stop.

“I’ll help,” Rocio lied perilously. “I’ll stop it happening.”

Pain flooded into him as the frantic thoughts clung to his false words. It was far, far more than the usual meshing of souls in search of bitter sustenance. He could feel himself gaining weight and strength as their thoughts entwined. And the pain surged towards ecstasy. Rocio could actually feel legs and arms jerking as agonizing heat played over skin, a throat which had been stung raw from screaming. It was all quite delicious, the kind of high a masochist would relish.

The man’s thoughts were becoming weaker, smaller, as Rocio pushed and wriggled himself deeper into the brain’s neural pathways. As he did so, more of the old human experiences made their eminently welcome return, the air rushing into his lungs, thud of a heart. And all the while his new host was diminishing. The way Rocio pushed him down, confining his soul, was almost instinctive, and becoming easier by the second.

He could hear the other lost souls of the beyond shrieking their outrage that he was the one to gain salvation. The bitter threats, the accusations of unworthiness.

Then there was just his host’s feeble protests, and a second oddly distant voice begging to know what was happening to its beloved. He squeezed the host’s soul away, expanding his own mind to fill the entire brain.

“That’s enough,” a woman’s voice said. “We need you for something more important.”

“Leave me!” he coughed. “I’m almost in, almost—” His strength was growing, the captive body starting to respond. Tear-drowned eyes revealed the wavery outline of three figures bending over him. Figures which must surely be angels. A gloriously pretty girl clad only in a resplendent white corona.

“No,” she said. “Get into the blackhawk. Now.”

There must have been some terrible mistake. Didn’t they understand? This was the miracle. The redemption. “I’m in,” Rocio told them. “Look, see? I’m in now. I’ve done it.” He made one of his new hands rise, seeing blisters like big translucent fungi hanging from every finger.

“Then get out.”

The hand disintegrated. Blood splattered across his face, obliterating his sight. He wanted to scream, but his vocal cords were too coarsened to obey.

“Get into the blackhawk, you little pillock, or we’ll send you right back into the beyond again. And this time we’ll never let you return.”

Another burst of quite astonishing pain, followed by equally frightening numbness, told him his right foot had been destroyed. They were gnawing away at his beautiful new flesh, leaving him nothing. He raged barrenly at the unfairness of it all. Then strange echoey sensations blossomed into his mind.

See?dariat asked. It’s simple, apply your thoughts like this.

He did, and affinity opened, joining him with the Mindor.

What is happening?the frantic blackhawk asked.

Rocio’s entire left leg was obliterated. White fire engulfed his groin and the stumpy remnant of his right leg.

Peran!the blackhawk called.

Rocio superimposed the captain’s mind tone over his own thoughts. Help me, Mindor.

How? What is happening? I could not feel you. You closed yourself to me. Why? You have never done that before.

I’m sorry. It’s the pain, a heart attack. I think I’m dying. Let me be with you, my friend.

Come. Hurry!

He felt the affinity link broaden, and the blackhawk was there waiting for its captain, its mind full of love and sympathy; a gentle and trusting creature for all its size and indomitable power. Kiera Salter exerted still more of her own particular brand of pressure.

With a last curse at the devils who left him no choice, Rocio abandoned that cherished human body, sliding himself along the affinity link. This transfer was different from the one which had brought him back from beyond. That had been a forced entry, this was a welcome embrace from an unsophisticated lover, drawing him in to secure him from harm.

The energistic nexus which his soul engendered established itself within the waiting neural cells at the core of the blackhawk, and the linkage which connected him to the captain’s body snapped as the skull was smashed apart by Kiera’s triumphant fist.

The Mindor sat on its pedestal on the second of Valisk’s three docking ledges, patiently sucking nutrient fluid into its storage bladders. Beyond the eclipse of the habitat’s non-rotating spaceport, the gas giant Opuntia was a pale cross-hatching of lime-green storm bands. The sight was a comforting one to the blackhawk. It had been birthed in Opuntia’s rings, taking eighteen years to grow into the lengthy hundred-and-twenty-five-metre cone of its mature form. Even among blackhawks, whose profiles varied considerably from the standard voidhawk disk shape, it was an oddity. Its polyp hull was a dusky green speckled with purple rings; three fat finlike protuberances angled up out of its rear quarter. Given its squashed-missile appearance, the only option for the life support module was a swept-back teardrop, which sat like a metallic saddle over the midsection of its upper hull.

Like all blackhawks and voidhawks its distortion field was folded around the hull, barely operative while it was docked. A condition which ended as soon as Rocio Condra’s soul invaded its neural cells. The number of neurones he now possessed was considerably larger than a human brain, increasing the amount of energistic power produced by the transdimensional twist. He extended himself out from the storage cluster Mindor had designated, breaking straight through the sub-routines designed to support him.

The startled blackhawk managed to ask: Who are you?before he vanquished its mind. but he couldn’t assume control of a blackhawk’s enormously complex functions as easily as he could a human body. There was no instinct to guide him, no old familiar nerve impulse sequences to follow. This was an alien territory, there hadn’t been any starships at all during his life, let alone living ones.

The autonomic routines, those regulating the Mindor ’s organs, were fine, he just left them operating. However, the distortion field was controlled by direct conscious thought.

A couple of seconds after he gained possession it was billowing outwards uncontrollably. The blackhawk tipped back, pulling the pedestal feed tubes from their orifices. Nutrient fluid fountained out, flooding across the ledge until the habitat hurriedly closed the muscle valves.

Mindor rocked forwards, then rose three metres above the mushroom-shaped pedestal as Rocio frantically tried to contain the oscillating fluxes running wild through his patterning cells. Unfortunately he couldn’t quite coordinate the process. Mass detection, the blackhawk’s primary sense, came from a sophisticated secondary manipulation of the distortion field. Rocio couldn’t work out where he was, let alone how to return to where he’d been.

What the hell are you doing?an irate rubra asked.

Mindor ’s stern swept around in a fast arc, lower fins almost scraping the ledge surface. The driver of a service vehicle slammed on the brakes, and reversed fast as the huge bitek starship swished past less than five metres in front of her cabin’s bubble windscreen.

Sorry,rocio said, frenziedly searching through the blackhawk’s confined memories for some kind of command routine. It’s a power flux. I’ll have it choked back in a second.

Two more blackhawks had started similar gyrations as returned souls invaded their neurones. Rubra shot them vexed questions as well.

Rocio managed to regulate the field somewhat more effectively, and tie in the mass forms he was sensing to the images from the sensor blisters. His hull was slithering dangerously close to the rim of the docking ledge.

He reconfigured the distortion field to impel him in the other direction. Which was fine, until he realized exactly how fast he was heading for the shell wall. And another (non-possessed) blackhawk was sitting in the way.

Can’t stop,he blurted at it.

It rose smooth and fast, shooting sixty metres straight up, protesting most indignantly. The Mindor skidded underneath, and just managed to halt before its rear fins struck Valisk’s shell.

The remaining two blackhawk captains in the Tacoul Tavern were finally sacrificed to Kiera’s strategy; and their ships shot off their respective pedestals like overpowered fireworks. Rubra and the other blackhawks fired alarmed queries after them. Three of the unpossessed blackhawks, thoroughly unnerved by their cousins’ behaviour, also launched themselves from the ledge. A collision appeared imminent as the giant ships cavorted in the kilometre gap between the two ledges. Rubra began broadcasting flight vectors at them to try to steer them apart, demanding instant obedience.

By now, Rocio had mastered the basics of distortion field dynamics. He manoeuvred his prodigious bulk back towards the original pedestal. After five attempts, edging around in jerky spirals, he managed to settle.

If you’ve all quite finished,rubra said as the agitated flock of blackhawks settled nervously.

Rocio sheepishly acquiesced to the admonishment. He and the other four possessed blackhawks exchanged private acknowledgements, swapping snippets of information on how to control their new bodies.

After experimenting for half an hour Rocio was pleasantly surprised with what he could see and feel. The gas giant environ was bloated with energy of many types, and a great deal of loose mass. There were overlapping tides of magnetic, electromagnetic, and particle energy. Twenty moons, hundreds of small asteroids. They all traced delicate lines across his consciousness, registering in a multitude of fashions: harmonics, colours, scents. He had far more sensations available than those produced by a human sensorium. And any sense at all was better than the beyond.

The affinity band fell into a subdued silence as they waited to see what would happen next.