The Credulity Nexus (13 page)

“
Ghosts and zombies,” she said, holding out
a hand to him. “What can they do to thwart us? We are doing His
will. In this, even the undead are His instruments.” She took his
hand in hers and smiled. “Come with me to the chapel. We should
pray together and seek His guidance. Let the Lord take some of this
burden off your shoulders, my love.” She pulled gently, and he
moved with her.

-oOo-

“
Holy crap!” Rik scowled out across the
tarmac. “You said you had a chartered jet waiting,” he complained
to the smiling upload. “Not this!”

“
Jet, scramjet, what's the difference?
It'll take you far, far away from here.”

“
Yeah, too far, maybe. I'm after a hop to
the next state, not a trip to the Moon.”

They rolled
steadily towards the Chinese-built AVIC StarLiner, a
top-of-the-range private, rocket-assisted scramjet. Sleek and long,
sharp-beaked and gleaming white, the ship looked like it might leap
into the sky at any moment and tear off into space. As well it
might. The AVIC StarLiner was designed to fly from the ground,
accelerating to Mach 28, straight into orbit.

When the car
had passed straight through the airport's security checkpoints
without so much as needing to slow down, Rik realised that the
upload had plenty of money to throw around on bribes. Looking at
the scramjet, he saw she had access to the kinds of funds that
would make a pork-barrelling senator blush.

“
Did you ever get that list of Cordell's
competitors?” he asked Freymann, out of curiosity.

“
Sure, but the Chicago Mafia isn't on
it.”

“
Anyone especially nasty?”

“
Not unless you count Lanham
Holdings.”

“
Never heard of them. What's interesting
about them?”

“
Only that their chairman, Martin Lanham,
is dead, just like our friend Rivers.”

“
An upload?” Rik was getting a queasy
feeling about this. He had nothing against uploads in general, but
a lot of people thought there was something very sinister about the
whole idea of dead people owning big chunks of the world. It
occurred to him that maybe there was something to the paranoia
after all.

“
Yeah, but he's no zombie like Black Beauty
here – he's a ghost. Runs the world's biggest information market
from an orbiting mega-computer called Omega Point.”

“
Is that who's paying for the scramjet?”
Rik asked Rivers. “This Lanham guy?”

“
Never heard of him,” Rivers answered,
apparently truthfully.

Rik nodded.
Whatever was going on, this was where he and Freymann got off.
Rivers could take her billion-dollar scramjet and go where she
liked. He needed to get onto the Feds and find out if Brie and
Blake were OK, get back to searching for the package, and find out
why no-one he knew was answering his calls. The first step in all
that was to get Rivers on the plane and make sure she left
town.

And that would
only go well if she co-operated.

The car
trundled to a stop close to the aircraft. A door stood open in the
jet's long fuselage, and a set of steps led from there to the
ground. There was no sign of any security.

“
OK, here's the deal,” said Rik. “You get
on the plane and fly away. We stay here and find ourselves another
ride. I'm sure you've worked out by now that my colleague and I
only really have the advantage while we have our big guns close to
your brainbox. That's why we're all going to get out of the car
together and walk to the plane.” He scrutinised the upload for a
reaction, but didn't see one. The woman sat calmly in her seat and
listened.

“
When you start to climb the steps, my
colleague here will turn her gun on the aircraft's engines. Those
things are made of lightweight composites, and I'm sure you can see
what a mess a Heckler-Koch MG6 would make of them. You'd lose your
escape route, airport security would be alerted, and the Feds would
probably be out here before you'd worked out what to do next.
Right?”

Rivers looked
out of the window for a moment, gazing at the gleaming aircraft
beside them. When she looked back, her expression was
regretful.

“
That's not a bad plan, Rik, and you know,
it might have worked. Except–”

Rik felt the
machine gun being yanked out of his hands at the same instant that
he realised Rivers had grasped the barrel. The upload, moving with
inhuman speed, had snatched the weapons and disarmed both Rik and
Freymann before either could react.

Rik tried to
launch himself at the black android, hoping he could distract her
long enough to let Freymann pull her gun. But he was nowhere near
fast enough. He heard Freymann shout an oath, and saw the upload's
hard little fist shoot towards his face.

After that,
there was only pain and blackness.

Veb Degen 1
Rea had seen some weird shit in his time – you hang out long enough
at The Harsh Mistress and nothing surprises you any more – but this
bunch took the biscuit. The Turgu mostly hung out in the Sump, the
deepest level of the city, emerging only to mug tourists and steal
liquor. Down there, they were kings of their stinking domain. Up in
the more civilised levels, they were treated like the nasty pests
they were. The other street gangs would attack them on sight. So
would the cops. They were a sick blend of obscure religious cult
and organised crime syndicate, and Veb was not happy to see them in
The Mistress.

Kadashman
Turgu, their boss and spiritual leader, sat cross-legged on a
micro-dirigible. The ultra-light, vacuum-filled platform was about
the size of an armchair. Small turbo-fans were attached to its
edges, and they twitched back and forth, maintaining its position.
Turgu himself seemed oblivious to the constant, swaying shuffle of
the machine, his large, hairy head managing to remain almost still
while the thing slid around under him.

He was a small
person. If he ever left his dirigible and stood on the ground, he
wouldn't come up to most men's chests. It was possibly because he
never left his floating throne that his body had become a small
pyramid of blubber. His belly rolled over his scrawny legs, and his
backside spread across the cushioned seat. Yet his face, bobbing
and weaving above it, bristling with a coarse ginger beard and hair
to match, had a sharp, manic look. His black eyes never seemed to
blink, and his thin lips were always pursed, as if in fierce
concentration.

A dozen of his
followers were with him; big, heavily-built men and women, who were
all naked from the waist up. They each were tattooed on the chest,
back and arms with the same colourful panorama: stone temples,
desert landscapes and strange sigils.

“
You know this is Black Orchid territory?”
Veb asked almost conversationally, as Turgu wafted over to the bar.
At least, that's who they paid their protection money to, for all
the good it had done the Drew sisters.

“
Fucking pagan bastards!” Turgu spat out
his opinion of the local gangsters as if challenging anyone in the
room to disagree.

“
Just saying,” said Veb. He didn't like
being behind the bar, but at least he had a pump-action shotgun
within easy reach. He'd rather have been out on the floor, where he
could take these guys on if necessary. But he was doing what he
could to keep the place running until Rik got back, and they were
short of bar staff. Since two of them had been killed, none of the
rest would come back to work.

“
Just fucking shut it, zombie.”

Veb turned
down the anger that was building up in him. He'd only just got the
place halfway restored and he didn't want to have to clean it up
again. Besides, he could see the Turgu were carrying some pretty
nasty weaponry, stuff it would be better not to tangle with. There
were two emergency call buttons under the counter; one for the
Black Orchids and one for the UNPF cops. Decisions, decisions.

“
So do you want a drink, or what?” he
asked.

Turgu looked
at him as if he was about to leap off his flying platform and
throttle him. The image of the little guy hanging from his throat
made Veb smile – on the inside.

“
I hear the Drew sisters was
shafted.”

Veb didn't
respond.

“
That means this fucking dump goes to their
heirs, dunnit?”

Veb had
already seen where the conversation was going. “These things take a
while to sort out. Probate and such.”

“
Fuck probate. Where's that fucker Drew? He
fucking owes me, and now he's got all this to pay me with. Where is
he?”

Veb was
fascinated by the way Turgu's body and his contraption swayed
beneath his outsize head, as if it was all dangling from his neck.
Not fascinated enough to stop him from noticing Turgu's followers
starting to jostle each other. Some of them hassled the customers,
like a bunch of bored kids getting fractious. Time to wrap things
up.

He pulled the
shotgun out from behind the bar and set it down in front of him,
his hand on the grip and his finger on the trigger. He didn't know
how many of the Turgu he'd get before someone got him but then,
neither did they.

“
He's on a business trip,” he said,
politely. “He can't be reached at the moment. I'll be sure to let
him know you dropped by.”

Turgu looked
down at the gun and then up at the placid, android face, clearly
calculating his chances of surviving. “What do you think you're
gonna do, you zombie fucker?” he asked, coming to what Veb could
only regard as the wrong decision. “You think I'm scared of a pile
of nano-shit like you?”

“
I'm sure you're a very brave
person.”

Turgu and his
dirigible wobbled closer. “I'm a fucking living god, you moron. I'm
the living embodiment of the ancient kings of Babylon.” Behind him,
his followers stopped messing about and formed up, murmuring some
kind of chant and fingering their various weapons.

“
Yet you still want money from Rik.” Veb
had decided that there was a fight coming, and nothing he could say
would stop it, so what the hell? “Tell me,” he asked. “Were all the
kings of Babylon as pug-ugly as you?”

To Veb's
surprise, Turgu didn't react. Instead, he waited, letting a small
smirk cross his face. “I love it when some shithead I'm gonna kill
makes it personal. I just really love that.”

Veb tensed,
waiting for one of them to make a move. He was sure it would be one
of the followers that raised their weapon first, while Turgu
himself dodged out of harm's way. But that's not how Veb intended
it to go down.

A second
crawled past. Then another. Veb caught a movement among the
followers – a shaven-headed woman was bringing up her buzz gun. Veb
had the shotgun off the bar and its barrel hard against Turgu's
chest before the ‘living god’ had a chance to react.
Two seconds ticked by. Three.

“
Well, well, well!” This new voice was deep
and strong.

Nobody moved,
and nobody turned their heads to look at whoever had just walked
in.

“
Weapons down, everybody,” the voice
commanded them.

Still, nobody
moved.

“
UN Peacekeeping Force, lunar Operations,
Lieutenant Lincoln Eugene Burleigh at your service. And these
outstanding heroes with me are the men and women of the 3rd Mobile
Force Reserve.”

Turgu's smirk
turned to grim anger as the situation dawned on him. “You called
the fucking cops, you zombie bastard.”

Veb kept his
eyes and his gun on his flying adversary. “Hey, nothing gets past
you, does it?”

The bar was
filling with heavily-armoured police, and the Turgu were shuffling
anxiously and looking to their leader for orders.

“
Kadashman Turgu,” the lieutenant said
warmly, strolling up to the bar. “As I live and breathe. I thought
you and your painted assholes were just some kind of sick joke the
guys in the 12th MFR made up to lighten the burden of having to
work way down there in that stink-hole. Yet here you are.” He stood
close to Turgu and looked him up and down with distaste. “In the
flesh.”

Turgu's jaw
worked as if he were grinding his teeth. Without taking his eyes
off Veb, he said, “This... thing is threatening me with a loaded
weapon, officer. I insist you arrest him.”

Lieutenant
Burleigh looked at Veb for a moment, then reached over and took the
shotgun away. Veb let him. The lieutenant weighed it in his hands
for a moment, then pushed the barrel up under Turgu's chin and
growled into his face.

“
Get the fuck out of my precinct, you
little pile of turds, before I throw you and your painted half-wits
in a cell and charge you with disturbing my afternoon poker
game.”

Turgu tried to
snarl some response, but Burleigh pushed the gun harder. The
dirigible's fans whined, trying to compensate.

“
Don't talk,” Burleigh advised him. “Just
go.”

To make it
possible, the lieutenant removed the gun and took a step back.
Turgu glared at Burleigh, then at Veb, sharing his fury equally
between them, and left in a whir of fans. His followers hurried
after him.

“
How'd you know to turn up with a small
army?” Veb asked the lieutenant as they watched the retreating
cultists.

The lieutenant
smiled a big, slow smile. “It's an arrangement we had with the late
Drew sisters. One press of the alarm means trouble. Two presses
means big trouble. I reckon you hit that button a dozen times.”