Veteran (50 page)

‘What is?’ Rolleston asked. ‘I’m sorry that family died. I’m sorry the other prostitutes that you worked with died when you abandoned them, but did you see their faces? They were being mind-controlled by Them, just as you have been.’

‘You know that’s not true,’ Morag said more quietly. I think she’d just got a glimpse of herself on the screen.

‘Really? Deny you don’t have a fragment of one of Them in your head?’ he demanded. Morag opened her mouth and then closed it again. ‘Nothing to say? This is very well done, but at the end of the day you have shown us nothing that couldn’t be fabricated. Yes, there are things here that have an element of truth, but all the best lies do. After all, we only have God’s assurance that it isn’t lying.’ He turned to Josephine. ‘Ready?’ She nodded.

I texted a query on their location to God. As I did, Rolleston cocked his head and smiled. He’d intercepted my communication. I received an answering text from Rolleston himself. I didn’t open it. God told me that Rolleston’s assault shuttle was about to land two floors above us. I looked around the node. Rannu looked as impassive as ever. He nodded to me from his position on the catwalk. Balor was leaning against the wall near the docking arm. He looked bored. I managed to get Buck and Gibby’s attention and signalled that violence was imminent. I moved over to where Pagan and Morag were.

‘They’re nearly here,’ I said. Pagan nodded grimly. Morag looked scared.

‘You did it,’ I said to them both. Morag managed a weak smile.

I tried to signal Mudge, but he was too busy arguing with Rolleston, or rather trying to convince the rest of the system that Rolleston was the bad guy here.

‘We can’t fake that amount of evidence,’ Mudge said.

‘You have unlimited processing power, and this is all mediated, so why not?’ Rolleston replied.

‘So nothing is real?’ Pagan asked.

‘I’m saying this obviously isn’t. It’s a complex and very well done illusion. Because, as we all know, the truth is nowhere as simple a creature as you would like it to be and it is always subjective. So all we are getting is what you want people to see Corporal Simm.’ It took me a moment to realise that Simm was Pagan’s real name.

‘Those are pretty words, Major,’ Pagan said. ‘We’ve tried to make everything as open, transparent and objective as we were able. Yes, there may be subjectivity, but that’s better than the lies that you and your Cabal have been telling us for years. I mean why are we wrong, despite having evidence, and you right, because you say so? That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘You’ve already admitted to having nearly infinite processing power. What was your aim, Corporal Simm? To make God omnipotent in the net?’ Rolleston asked.

Pagan went quiet for a few beats as the realisation hit him, and then said, ‘You knew.’

‘You were compromised by GCHQ and the NSA. Since we’re being so truthful, are you going to answer the question?’ Rolleston said.

I knew at this moment the rest of Pagan’s co-programmers were using God to find out who’d compromised them, and if the opportunity was available deal with them. Hackers had a well-developed sense of revenge.

‘Yes, that was our aim,’ Pagan finally answered.

‘So, basically anything’s possible with your alien program?’ Rolleston asked.

‘In theory, but I would invite hackers everywhere, government or otherwise, to examine God.’

It would still be mediated and you have the power,’ Rolleston pointed out.

Something occurred to me. ‘If you knew about them and you knew they had the power to create something this dangerous—’

‘So you admit it’s dangerous?’ Rolleston asked.

‘Why didn’t you shut it down?’ I continued.

‘Had I been, in-system I would have, but Simm and his little conspiracy weren’t compromised by the infiltrator when I left, so as far as we were concerned they were just a group of arrogant and deluded hacker has-beens. It took their collusion with one of the enemy, their treason, for them to become dangerous. What? You think They are incapable of subtlety? You think They don’t have intelligence, psyops, information warfare? Just how naive are you people exactly?’

‘You were stealing their work and using it to help develop Demiurge,’ Gregor said. This time Mudge decided not to put his hybrid features up on the screen.

‘No ...’ Pagan moaned and sat down at the bottom of the steps leading to the catwalk.

‘I feel that you should all be aware that Major Rolleston and Private Bran have landed,’ God said helpfully. I came off the wall where I’d been leaning.

‘See you soon, Jakob,’ Rolleston said. His image blinked off. Why’d he single me out? I thought irrationally.

‘God, can you get him back up?’ I asked, all business now. In answer God brought up an image from a landing-pad lens two floors above us. We watched the docking arm reach out to the sleek and violent-looking, next-generation assault shuttle.

God cut to the security lens in the docking arm. The Major and the Grey Lady striding down the corridor. Josephine put her laser carbine to her shoulder and the picture disappeared. Cut to another lens and the same thing happened. It seemed that the Major and the Grey Lady had had quite enough publicity for one day.

As Mudge continued presenting the machinations, as he called them, of the Cabal system-wide, I followed the progress of the Major and Bran. They systematically destroyed or jammed every comms and surveillance device they found as they made their way down to Cat’s security people on the other side of what now felt like a very thin security shield.

They killed the crawlers we’d sent out, destroyed lenses and finally set up a white-noise transmitter. The last image we had of them was of Rolleston arguing with Cat while her people watched. They looked ready to step in if it got nasty. Josephine was just looking at the security screen covering the front of the node. Somehow it felt like she was looking through the lens and through me. Again I felt fear above and beyond the anticipation of combat.

27

Atlantis

‘Sergeant MacDonald?’ The voice was American, northern states. It sounded like someone was trying to spread a veneer of culture and corporate elocution lessons over street roots. I saw Gregor turn to look up at the viz screen; even on his warped features the look of disgust was unmistakeable. On the screen was a handsome, well-groomed young man in an immaculate understated suit that screamed upper-echelon corp. The giveaway was the sheathed antique katana held casually in his left hand.

Everything about his appearance was perfect, from his hair to the duelling scars. God was providing a biography for this guy. I downloaded it onto my internal visual display but still only managed to catch the highlights. His name was Vincent Cronin. He’d grown up in one of the more Darwinian neighbourhoods of Detroit and excelled in cash generation for one of the more successful gangs. He’d been drafted into a relatively prestigious American airborne unit and seen action on Lalande. He’d worked his way through the ranks, played the system - first degree, commission to officer, some clever investments - and there’d been a corp job waiting back in the world. By all accounts he applied the same natural selection skills he’d learnt in the street to the boardroom. More than twenty-five dead execs by his sword. More importantly he was canny, good at business, as well as hell on wheels with a sword.

Now he was an executive without a portfolio. Reading between the lines he was the Cabal’s corp liaison, their fixer. He solved the problems that didn’t require Rolleston’s violent attention.

I saw Cronin smile. It was the sort of smile that would put people at ease, though I couldn’t help but think there was a predatory quality to it. He seemed to be sitting in the lobby of some kind of plush comfortable-looking hotel.

Standing not far away from him was the muscle. The guy was huge, as big as Balor, but nominally human-looking though his features were a mismatching patchwork collection of ugliness. His eyes were lenses but seemed to bulge out like a fish’s, and he had a very pronounced, forward-jutting jaw. He wore an expensive and well-tailored suit that he looked very uncomfortable in. A Hawaiian shirt beneath the suit jacket and a large trilby finished the ensemble. Everything about him screamed cybernetic-induced psychosis, not least his dress sense. I don’t think I would’ve liked to fight this guy. I wasn’t even sure I’d want Gregor or Balor to fight him. He stood a little way from Cronin, constantly scanning the surrounding area. He was paying no attention whatsoever to the events unfolding on the viz screen.

I downloaded the muscle’s bio. It filled me with disgust. He’d been US special forces, spent his time on Lalande as well. Possibly that was where he’d met Cronin, but he’d come back to spend time in a Green Beret counter-insurgency unit. Basically he killed humans. He’d been loaned out and cross-trained with the CIA’s Special Activities Section, their paramilitary black-ops wing. Just before he’d gone to work for Cronin he’d been in command of the Washington branch of the IRS’ elite SWAT audit team. He was a taxman. His name was Martin Kring.

‘Cronin, you piece of shit,’ Gregor hissed at the viz screen.

‘To your friends and everyone watching this I think it’s important that we all know that MacDonald is completely compromised by the alien entity that resides within his flesh. He works for the enemy. Whether or not that is the case with Miss McGrath I cannot say, though I suspect it is, but we studied MacDonald for over a year and he is definitely one of them.’

‘That’s bullshit!’ Gregor said.

‘Why, because you say so? Whatever you think of us, we have worked in humanity’s best interests—’

‘Funny, it looks like you’ve worked in your own best interests. Though even allowing for that I can’t imagine why you started the war,’ Mudge said.

‘I wasn’t even alive when the war started, and we only have your word for it that you think the people I work with had anything to do with it,’ Cronin said evenly.

‘My word? I’d call it a lot of evidence, but I would encourage people to check it for themselves.’

‘I’m not about to get into yet another argument about mediation with you. People are smart enough to see through these things. I’m sure any vet knows the self-evident truth about the nature of Them,’ Cronin said with a look of distaste on his face.

‘Or, you know, check out the evidence for themselves. What I don’t get though is why start the war in the first place? I mean, I could see that you and yours would make a lot of money investing in munitions, cyberware, shipbuilding, electronics and various other industries, but surely it was an insane thing to do? You couldn’t know you were going to beat them?’ Mudge asked.

‘Then surely you’ve answered your own question,’ Cronin said.

‘They’d studied Them,’ Gregor began. We all looked over at him and suddenly it was his face on the viz screen. He was being filmed through Mudge’s eyes. ‘They’re not at all like us, like you. The Cabal aren’t even sure if they’re sentient as such. They theorised that they could be some kind of organic neural net processor, a biological learning machine, but they learn by reaction. If you can control their stimuli then you can control their progress. Basically they would always meet force with a similar degree of force, because you were teaching Them how to fight as you went along,’ he finished.

‘They guaranteed a stalemate,’ I said. Gregor nodded.

‘And no biological warfare that would’ve wiped us out, no nuclear weapons etcetera, etcetera. Nobody would be allowed the tools they needed to win. They modelled it using the most powerful software they could find. They forecast all possible outcomes of the conflict until the odds were in their favour and the chances of Them winning were infinitesimal, and then made sure they kept back certain edges for themselves,’ he said.

‘What edges?’ Pagan asked. I glanced up at the screen. Cronin was listening intendy but showing no other reaction.

‘Early precursors to Crom—’ Gregor began.

‘Even out of the evidence you have manufactured there seems to be none to support the existence of this Crom virus you talk of,’ Cronin interrupted.

‘A more primitive version designed to kill rather than control,’ Gregor finished.

‘That’s still a hell of a risk,’ Mudge said.

‘Not really. They are ordered and cooperative, where we are chaotic. It was surprisingly easy to gauge how They would react. At the end of the day They are little more than plants and as predictable as which side of the boulder moss grows,’ Gregor finished. I must admit, uniformity of tactics or not, They never felt all that predictable when I was fighting Them.

‘We were fighting space lichen?’ Mudge said. ‘Somebody should’ve said.’ The thing was, I couldn’t decide if knowing that would’ve made things better or worse for morale.

Mudge turned back to Cronin. ‘I still don’t get why?’

‘Why what? I’ve little idea about any of this. It sounds like an involved conspiracy fantasy. Why don’t you ask one of your alien friends? They’re running this psy-op,’ Cronin answered impassively.

‘Do you ever get tired of all the spin and the lies?’ Mudge asked. Cronin didn’t dignify the question with an answer.

‘Look, let’s ignore this guy’s bullshit. I think we’ve got more important things to worry about.’ Everyone ignored me and apparently the fact that Rolleston and the Grey Lady could breach at any moment. I couldn’t be the only person shitting himself, could I?

‘Biotechnology,’ Gregor said. He sounded tired. I could understand why; trying to navigate through this sea of lies against constant denial was tiring.

‘I can see that,’ Mudge said. The viz screen was split three ways between him and reaction shots of Cronin and Gregor. ‘But even allowing for great advances and huge profits it just seems a trivial reason for sixty years of conflict.’

‘Once again you answer your own question. Nobody but an insane person would do these things,’ Cronin said. Gregor glanced up at the viz screen but pretty much ignored him.

‘Not really. Profit aside, many of the Cabal are dying. Mixing Their naturally evolving but incredibly advanced, in its own way, biotechnology with human ingenuity and scientific know-how and you’re looking at incredible advances. Advances we would have problems even imagining,’ Gregor said. Mudge gave this some thought. He did a close-up on himself just so everyone could see how thoughtful he was.