War in Heaven (36 page)

‘And this from someone with no faith,’ Pagan scoffed. He was in his Druidical icon, except that he too wore a kimono like the rest of us. The kimonos were a piece of code gifted to us by Nuiko. It was code that had been thoroughly vetted by Morag and Pagan before it got anywhere near us.

‘It happens,’ Morag said. Presumably irritated at having to back me up. She too wore a kimono and I was relieved that she was wearing her Maiden of Flowers icon out of respect for our host rather than the Black Annis. I didn’t like the Black Annis icon and I didn’t want to meet it while Morag was still so angry at me. That said, I hadn’t forgotten that Morag could kill me in here. I was only slightly worried that the tea might contain a piece of biofeedback poison code. Still it tasted nice when we finally were allowed to taste it and had been quiet long enough for our conversation to be proper.

‘So I’ve heard,’ Pagan said, smiling patronisingly. ‘To anybody you’ve known?’

‘Well no,’ Morag said, suddenly unsure of herself.

‘It’s a myth,’ Mudge said. His icon looked like himself without augmentation. I think it was more of Morag’s work. He’d only been allowed into the tea room sanctum after he’d promised Pagan that he’d behave.

‘Like the spirits in the net?’ I asked, bowing slightly to Nuiko, like Pagan had taught us, as she poured me some more tea. Pagan started to answer. ‘I’ve seen an exorcism,’ I said, forestalling his reply.

‘Bullshit,’ Mudge said and then studiously ignored Pagan’s glare of disapproval.

‘In Fintry, Vicar did it.’

‘Very convincing theatre, I’ve no doubt,’ Pagan said. For someone who wanted us to behave in here he seemed to be desperate to get slapped.

‘Maybe, but the guy was a howling lunatic, and according to friends and kin he was acting differently and knew stuff he shouldn’t. Vicar plugged himself into the guy. There was lots of screaming for someone who was supposed to be trancing, some thrashing around, a biofeedback kicking that Vicar swears hadn’t been inflicted by him, and then the guy was better,’ I finished.

‘There could be any number of—’ Pagan started.

‘Is it just the idea of this Demiurge possessing people that scares you badly?’ Merle asked. His voice was a deep rich baritone. It was also cold and emotionless.

I wasn’t sure I liked this guy. All he’d done since we’d come on board was eat the high-calorie combat rations we’d brought with us and exercise. Mudge had asked him how he’d managed to retain any degree of fitness while locked in the hole. Isometrics, Merle had told him. He did not have much time to get combat-ready after his imprisonment. Whatever we could say about him, he certainly seemed driven.

I wasn’t sure if Cat and him had sorted out their differences but I had come across them having a private conversation jacked into each other. Merle, like Cat, was wearing an off-the-shelf icon. The kimonos hung shapelessly off both of them.

‘No, I don’t like the idea, do you?’ Pagan asked, somewhat testily.

‘I don’t like any of this—’ Merle began.

‘Prefer to be in your hole?’ Mudge asked.

‘But I think we need to face up to what that means in terms of security,’ he said, glancing over at Nuiko. It was her house. We were in FTL; there was no one for her or God, who was in the
Tetsuo Chou
’s systems, to tell out here. I’d agreed with Pagan’s call on that. Also it wasn’t as if she knew what we were going to be doing on the ground because we didn’t know ourselves. ‘It means that if any of us are taken we’re completely compromised and quickly.’

‘So we don’t get taken alive?’ Mudge said. He was smiling. I think going out in flash of glory was beginning to appeal to him.

‘You ready to kill any of us who gets captured?’ Merle asked.

‘Okay, you’ve proved how hard core you are. Let’s change the subject,’ I said, even though I knew he had a point.

‘Problem won’t go away,’ Merle said.

‘He’s right,’ Cat agreed. Though, like Morag agreeing with me, I think this cost her some.

‘I am prepared to kill any of us who gets captured,’ I said, ‘because I’ve seen the alternative. The people we killed used to be friends of mine.’ Except I knew I could never pull the trigger on Morag. I reflected that she had no such qualms, which was good. I didn’t want to find myself chewing down on a pile of corpses wearing someone else’s face. It didn’t seem dignified or hygienic.

‘How’d you get out of that hole anyway?’ Mudge asked. He was taking a lot of interest in our latest addition.

‘When the warewolf opened up the oubliette I just ran between its legs,’ Merle answered.

‘Simple as that?’ I asked.

‘Every second I’d been in that hole was preparation for that moment,’ he answered.

The problem was that we hadn’t had the chance to hang around and find out what was going on with the Vucari, why they’d done what they’d done. We’d had God relay the information of what we’d seen back to Earth, but that was the best we could do. Then we’d left on the
Tetsuo Chou
as quickly as we could, though if this was the opening move in the attack on Earth then for all we knew we could be passing Lalande’s colonial fleet in the night at FTL.

Merle was right, I had to admit. Everyone talks eventually, and eventually would become quickly if they used sense interrogation techniques because they could distend time. Even then we still had time. If Demiurge or whatever could actually possess then we had no time. If someone was taken that meant total compromise. That meant nobody went home, we just ran. So we needed to make sure that nobody got captured. That meant a suicide solution, which included a kill switch for a firestorm program in our internal electronic memories. More importantly it meant that we needed to be prepared to kill each other if we saw someone going down and we had the opportunity. Fighting Them was hard but less complicated. I missed Their simplicity.

Security-wise things had relaxed a little because we were self-contained. We would be keeping God out of planning as much as possible, but even he would have nobody to tell as he would not try and communicate with any Demiurge-infected system. Nuiko we would tell what she needed to know for her part of the job. Beyond that we would keep her in the dark as well. As much for her own good as ours. Talking to Pagan, though, I got the feeling that she would fly the
Tetsuo Chou
into the heart of a sun before she would allow herself to be compromised by the Black Squadrons.

My problem with Nuiko was that she was new and I didn’t understand her. Merle I didn’t trust but I had a frame of reference for him. Despite his behaviour he wasn’t a million miles removed from us. But Nuiko’s reserve was about a hundred times more extreme than your average English person’s. She was very private and apparently very respectful of our privacy, even though we were quite literally guests in her world. A lot of her behaviour seemed very ritualistic – the past, if it was even a real past, seemed important to her. To me she seemed to be fighting to keep something alive. Something I didn’t understand. I guess that her being a chimera didn’t aid my understanding. To all intents and purposes I was trying to relate to a machine, but she just seemed so … alien.

And then she withdrew. Pagan watched her and I watched Pagan as she took small steps to a sliding wood-and-paper panel and slid it shut behind her. This symbolised her leaving the closed system. In the real world we were all sitting cross-legged on crates facing each other, plugged into a memory cube. The jack that connected Nuiko was mounted on a cable snake, which would have disengaged from the memory cube and would be snaking its way back towards the armoured cocoon that protected our pilot. The memory cube held a downloaded copy of the tea house environment. Another gift from Nuiko. All these gifts made me nervous, but I wasn’t looking after the information security aspect of the operation.

Pagan and Morag started rechecking the security. Glyphs of light appeared in front of them, throwing shadows over their respective icons’ features. I took the opportunity to stand up and pace over to the wooden veranda. It looked out onto an ornamental garden of stone and water features. Past the garden was the stunning mountain vista. The tea house was part of some kind of castle complex built high into the side of a mountain. The fact that I could enjoy the mountain air, seemingly feel it cold and thin in my lungs, was sublime.

The holographic display hovering over the low lacquered wooden table took me out of the illusion and reminded me where I was and what I was doing.

‘This secure?’ Merle asked.

‘As anything is any more,’ Pagan told him. ‘Are you in or not?’

‘I’m not happy to be here, but it’s an improvement. Besides –’ he looked at Cat ‘– my sister has provided me with some very compelling reasons to help. Not least of which is a fuckload of money.’

‘Just so you know we’re probably not coming back,’ Pagan told him. ‘And don’t swear.’ I glanced over at him before turning back to Merle.

‘Want to share those compelling reasons?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Merle told me flatly. ‘Besides, I know the lie of the land. Things go to shit, I reckon I can disappear.’

‘I told you, don’t swear,’ Pagan said. I don’t think he liked Merle but there was something else here as well.

‘Fuck, Pagan, she’s not even in the fucking room,’ Mudge said, smiling.

‘I know. It’s just—’

‘It doesn’t seem right,’ I said. Pagan nodded. The language, the briefing, it was going to war with the environment. We needed our moments of fantasy. ‘And that’s it,’ I said with finality. They all looked at me expectantly.

‘I’ll bite. What’s it?’ Mudge finally asked.

‘From now on we’re not trying to piss each other off. We’re not trying to score points.’ I looked over at Merle. ‘We don’t need the strong silent hard men—’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Morag and Mudge said in unison.

I bit down the flash of irritation and jealousy. She had more than the right to try and make me feel that way.

‘If we don’t stop trying to pull each other apart then I will sabotage the OILO cocoons myself and we’ll sit out the war. Okay?’

‘Plus you won’t have to make the jump?’ Pagan said, but he was smiling.

I nodded.

‘No offence, man, but you’re part of the problem,’ Cat said. I glanced over at Morag, or rather the Maiden of Flowers that Morag was wearing. She was studiously looking elsewhere.

‘I think we all are, but you’re right. It’s not going to get in the way. We’ll either deal with it or ignore it effectively, or the mission won’t be happening at all.’

The Maiden of Flowers’ head snapped round to look at me. I thought she was about to argue. Maybe it sounded too much like I was making decisions for her, which people had been doing all her life. All I thought I was doing was stating our only two real options for the situation we were in. I think she reached that conclusion as well and nodded.

‘This soap opera’s a joke, right?’ Merle asked.

‘You can pack that in as well. I realise you don’t know us so you’ve got to wipe your cock in our faces so we know you’re not a victim. We get it. You’re hard core, so you can stop now. Also any problems you have with your sister, resolve them or leave them until after.’

He stared at me, but his icon was off the shelf and it didn’t have the same effect that being stared at by his weirdly intense brown eye implants would have had.

‘This mission being scrubbed is not the problem for me that it is for you,’ he told us.

‘Fine. Either you’re in or out. You’re out, you can rattle around in here until we’re finished.’

‘Bullshit,’ Merle said. Pagan’s icon seemed to twitch. ‘You’d put a bullet in my head.’

‘Compelling reasons. If you’re in, you play nicely.’

He gave what I’d said some thought and then nodded. The guy was a prima donna, I decided. He was too used to doing ops on his own.

‘Anyone who has a problem with Mudge’s pharmaceutical recreations can mind their own business,’ I said.

Mudge grinned but Cat and Pagan protested.

I continued, ‘Mudge, your hobby gets in the way, you run out and have a nasty withdrawal, or for whatever reason can’t keep up then you get left behind. If it’s a dodgy situation and it looks like you’ll get compromised I’ll shoot you myself.’

‘You are so masterful,’ Mudge said acidly.

I could tell he was about to go off on me. Come on, Mudge, I urged silently. You’re not stupid. You know I’ve faith in you. This has to be said. This is for the audience. I watched Mudge’s icon swallow. Morag’s programming was superb. I was betting that the tranced-in Mudge had done that back in the meat world. Mudge seemed to master his anger and nodded.

‘While we’re on the subject, what were you doing back in Trace’s office?’ I asked.

‘What? The guy was an arsehole?’ Mudge said.

‘So? We’ve met arseholes before.’

‘And I always deal with them like that.’ He was sounding defensive now.

‘You almost got us killed,’ Cat said angrily before turning to me. ‘And this is the point. I’m sure he’s a party guy but the drugs in his system compel him to make bad decisions, make him overconfident.’

‘That’s really not the drugs,’ I told her. It was meant to be flippant but in retrospect who knew? It was impossible to separate who Mudge was from the drugs. I’d only ever seen him straight once. That was in Maw City and he’d been sick from withdrawal.