The Naked God - Flight

The Tyrathca ship had risen above the arkship’s horizon. It launched fifteen combat wasps straight at him. He swallowed away fast.

The level-one cavern was quickly and silently saturated with light, revealing the cyclorama of frozen water. Ripples and waves were caught in mid-swell, drained of colour as they had been of heat. The endocarps were different. Flat cliffs of rock, rimmed with ledges of metal just above the ice. One of them boasted a tiny pinprick of warmth. Five armour-suited figures hovered in front of it, watching the light source expand; twisted fragments of starlight threaded through the length of the wormhole to spray out at random. There was no other indication of the terminus opening.

As the light dimmed it shone across Oenone ’s marbled blue hull, glinting off the crew toroid. The huge voidhawk swept round the lake’s curvature towards the exploration team, skirting the rickety old axial gantry with simple grace.

You’ve no idea how good it is to see you,samuel said, accompanying the statement with a wash of gratitude and relief.

You too,Oenone replied. I knew I could do this.

Etchells conceded defeat. He wasn’t going to find out why the two starships had come here, not now. Oenone was inside the arkship for less than five minutes before swallowing away again. Its wormhole terminus opened out above the star system’s second planet. The Adamist ship jumped there as well.

Etchells joined them, at a non-threatening distance, observing the Adamist ship fly round the planet on a tight slingshot trajectory. When it jumped, Etchells tried to follow. But it must have used multiple consecutive jumps, because he couldn’t find it anywhere near the emergence coordinate. With his energy patterning cells badly depleted, and his nutrient reserve getting low, he began the long, lonely trip back to New California. It was time to hand the whole problem over to Kiera and Capone.

Chapter 14

Candles shaped like dark lily pads bobbed about over the bath water, never managing to touch the two bodies resting in the middle. Several of them had become mired in the burgs of apple-scented bubbles, their wicks sizzling as the flames struggled to stay alight. More candles were flickering gamely along the bath’s marbled rim, half a metre tall; they were cemented into place by thick rivulets of wax. As the only source of light in the suite’s dilapidated bathroom, their weak yellow flickers bestowed an appropriately dingy appearance.

For years the Chatsworth had been one of central Edmonton’s most renowned five-star hotels, attracting the wealthy and the famous. But successive changes of management and ownership had seen it decay badly over the last two decades as too much of its cash flow had been diverted from maintaining standards to inflating shareholder dividends. Eventually it was trading solely on its name, and that could never last. Now it was closed for a much needed refurbishment and re-launch. But the work crews and their mechanoids hadn’t even started stripping the old fittings out when New York’s problems with the possessed hit the AV news. After that, most of Earth’s long-term commercial investment projects were put on hold while the financiers and entrepreneurs waited to see what the outcome would be. The Chatsworth included.

Qui

Qui

Qui

“We’re the bad guys?” Courtney asked, puzzled. “I thought we were doing the right thing smashing up the world?”

Qui

Her confusion vanished, and she was smiling with simple contentment again. “I believe in you.” She cupped his balls, squeezing like he’d taught, and started to lick the length of his dick.

“After I’ve finished fucking you, I’m going to go over and kill another one of Ba

“I don’t get it.” Courtney sat back, glancing up inquiringly. “Why don’t you just march in there and start torturing her? It’s not like she can stop you, or anything.”

“Because this is exactly what she did to me. To us. All of us. She frightens people. It’s her bang. What she can do to you up in that sanctum of hers is so fucking freaky and scary it hammers into your brain like some monster prick. All you can think of is how to stop her doing anything bad to you. Everybody in the coven knows they’re go

“I see what you’re doing,” Courtney said, pleased with herself. “You’re stalking her.”

“That’s a part of it, yeah. Each time I go over there and kill one of her people, it ruins a little more of what she is. The Ba