War in Heaven (66 page)

I just stared at him.

‘Any other secret missions you want to share?’ Morag asked. I could see the conflict on Merle’s face. Morag was angry. ‘Look, arsehole, I find you’re holding out on us and I will plug myself into your head and kill you the hard way,’ the eighteen-year-old Dundonian girl told the hardened assassin. And he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. What the fuck was going on here?

‘Just one,’ he said. ‘I’m being paid a staggering amount of money to kill Rolleston.’

‘Join the queue,’ I told him.

He gave me a look of contempt that made me want to hit him. Except that he’d already handed my arse to me once.

‘Difference is I can probably do it.’

‘How?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, it’s not as easy as beating up Jakob, you know?’ Morag said.

‘Hey!’ But she ignored me.

‘Multiple plasma shots to the head.’

It could work, I supposed. We certainly hadn’t tried it, and if there was a small-arms solution that was probably the best bet. Except that Merle hadn’t watched Rolleston walk through railgun fire on Atlantis.

‘That it?’ I asked.

‘A tailored virus – the blades are the delivery device. A variant of Crom called Crom Dhu. Designed to kill people with Themtech bio-nanites in their system.’

‘You brought that here?’ Morag demanded incredulously.

‘You sure it does what they say it does?’ I asked. ‘We’ve had bad luck with that sort of thing in the past.’

‘I know they want Rolleston very, very dead.’

‘Cronin?’ I asked.

‘A luxury. They’re terrified of Rolleston.’

I looked at Cat and finally Pagan. Pagan had guilt written all over his face. I saw Morag glance over at him.

‘You need my brother. You try and hurt him, you’ve got me to deal with as well,’ Cat told us.

Tailgunner and Mother looked like that was okay with them. I looked at Morag. She didn’t look happy but she shrugged.

‘Get out of my sight,’ I told Merle.

He looked like he was about to say something but thought better of it. His contempt for us was written all over his face, however.

‘What?! We’re just letting him get away with it?’ Tailgunner demanded.

‘You want to kill him?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.’

Despite his anger and what he thought he was capable of at the moment, I was pretty sure that Tailgunner would struggle to murder in cold blood. Mother, on the other hand, I was less sure of. She put a hand on the big hacker’s shoulder.

‘Let it go,’ she told him.

Tailgunner looked like he was about to argue but lapsed into silence and stared at Merle’s back as he walked away from us.

I turned to Pagan. He was pale. Not frightened, but his guilt was palpable. Everyone else was staring at him as well now.

‘What did you do?’ Morag asked quietly.

‘I’m so sorry,’ was all he could manage.

‘Everyone’s sorry, Pagan. Just tell us what you did.’ I was getting angry now. Merle I could see. Fucking me over was just a job to him. After all he didn’t know me. Pagan, however, I’d fought by his side, supported his hare-brained schemes. I’d thought I could trust him. He’d betrayed us as well. It was written all over his face.

‘They told me to,’ he said miserably.

‘Who? Sharcroft? That prick tells you to do something and you just sell us down the river?’ I demanded.

‘Not Sharcroft and not us. Just you.’ At least he had the courtesy to look me straight in the lens when he said it. I felt something cold in my gut. That feeling I had that there was something slithering around us just out of sight, pulling our strings, manipulating us.

‘Who?’ Morag demanded.

Salem got there first. ‘Your gods?’

Pagan nodded miserably. Afterwards I would think that it was almost an involuntary reaction. I danced forward and jabbed at his face, felt my friend’s nose break under my knuckles, watched an old man hit the ground. Another old man interposed himself between me and Pagan’s prone form with surprising speed for someone in their eighties.

‘Please,’ Salem said.

Morag walked past us and spared me a glare before she knelt down next to Pagan. He had propped himself up against the foot of
Kopuwai
.

‘You sold me out because of a voice in your fucking head?!’ I demanded. I was leaning around Salem. I saw him wince as I swore.

‘They’re real. We know that now. You know that – you spoke to one of them.’ He was desperately trying to justify himself.

‘Do you know what they did to me in there?! What they showed me?! What they made me do?!’ I was shouting now. He flinched with every question. ‘And you sell me out so your friends in your head can make you feel special?!’

‘I thought you just spilled your guts and had some sex,’ Morag said acidly.

I tried to ignore the jibe even though it felt like she’d just stabbed me.

‘They’re not in my head – stop saying that!’ Pagan shouted.

‘Give me a good reason not to kill you, Pagan,’ I said.

‘Leave him alone,’ Morag said, glaring at me again. She turned back to Pagan. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

As I looked down at one bleeding old man, another in my way, I suddenly felt foolish and impotent. The anger drained out of me. I stepped away from them and Salem relaxed. As the anger left I started to feel the hurt of betrayal. It was an insight into how Morag must be feeling about me.

‘Ogham came to me,’ he started. Pagan had once told me that Ogham was the Celtic patron god of writing and brewing. Pagan identified with him as someone who wrote code. ‘He told me that Jakob had to be given to Demiurge.’

‘Why?’ I demanded.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you fucking did it anyway?!’ I shouted. I felt like apologising to Salem for my swearing.

‘Let him answer,’ Morag told me coldly.

‘It had something to do with Pais Badarn Beisrydd.’

‘Oh this is bollocks,’ I spat.

‘No, no, it’s really not,’ Tailgunner said. ‘Miru’s eel net.’

Pagan was nodding.

‘We’re not just having visions now. We’re not just seeing things on the net that are very real to us despite a total lack of evidence,’ Salem said. ‘Now we’re being given artefacts, programs, pieces of code way in advance of what we can do, maybe as much as four or five generations ahead. Better than the best corp and military stuff. I saw a djinn in the net. She told me to come to you.’

‘A djinn?’ Pagan asked. ‘I though they were all evil.’

‘They are like people – some are good and some are bad. She told me that we cannot trust angels any more.’

There it was again. After all we’d done to break away from being manipulated by the likes of the Cabal, here we were dancing to someone, something else’s tune.

‘So what are they?’ I asked.

‘What they are not is figments of our imagination,’ Tailgunner growled.

‘Or fragments of God,’ Salem said. Tailgunner and Pagan turned sharply to look at him. ‘My faith does not come from the net. They are copies, not spirits. Though these copies may do God’s will.’

‘Which leaves either evolved AIs or aliens,’ I said. Everyone looked uncomfortable. I looked at Pagan. ‘And again I ask why?’

‘The way Ogham spoke suggested that he knew you would get out of there, would be you again. I think that’s why Nuada set up the cage—’

‘It was Nuada who imprisoned me?!’ I was angry again. It was Nuada who had let me hear myself torturing my friends.

Pagan looked up at me. ‘He protected you. Locked part of you, the most important part, away from Demiurge’s control. That’s why we were able to save you.’ Back was the hacker explaining to the technologically uninitiated what he felt was the obvious.

‘And again why?’ As I asked I remembered dreams of blackened glass, fire and a dark sun burning in the sky. The landscape had similarities with the net feed I’d seen in the Cabal’s Atlantis facility.

‘I don’t know. I need to look inside your head again,’ he told me.

‘Oh yeah, now the trust is so strong between us.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Tailgunner said.

‘You’ve already threatened me today.’

‘I’ll do it then,’ Morag said.

‘You tried to kill me!’

‘I will look,’ Salem said. ‘With Jakob’s permission.’

I looked at the calm old man. His weathered leathery features, the fissures in his skin. He was clothed like his icon and everything from those clothes to his calm demeanour seemed out of place here. Then something occurred to me.

‘Pagan, you said the only reason I was saved was because of what Nuada did.’ Morag and Pagan nodded. Both of them looked unhappy. ‘Rannu?’

Their expressions told me everything I needed to know. His screamed obscenities were still echoing through the cave. We’d lost another friend but they’d left us with a twisted mockery just to remind us.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pagan said miserably. He looked broken. It was why he’d gone for me before the exorcism, when I’d been savaging Morag – guilt. I couldn’t find it in myself to feel angry with him any more. I think he’d finally got what he wanted. He was a true priest now, a tool of the gods. I don’t think it was what he’d been expecting.

‘No,’ I said. Everyone turned to look at me. ‘We’re getting him back.’

‘It can’t be done,’ Pagan told me. I could see Salem and Tailgunner shaking their heads.

‘Jakob, listen. Normally I’d be the first to agree we should push this but seriously there’s no way,’ Morag told me. She was trying to control her voice, not show how upset she was about losing Rannu.

‘It reverses the interface, effectively. If meat can control hard- and software, then why not the other way? It’s the same principle as slaveware but Demiurge’s sophistication is such that it’s considerably more insidious, thorough and with none of the drop-off in motor skills. If anything, cognitive abilities increase, particularly if there is a connection to Demiurge proper,’ Salem explained.

This made a lot of sense. It didn’t matter how good their black propaganda was, how concrete their cover story, there was no way the fleet and ground commanders would have just handed over their forces to Rolleston and Cronin. They must have possessed certain key figures. This worried me. I knew what it was like, what Demiurge was like and how much it liked to cause pain. I didn’t like the idea of it possessing people who had so much power.

‘We were only able to get you out with Ogham’s help and because your core identity was kept safe by Nuada’s cage. Even then the tiny fragment of Demiurge managed to work out what we were doing.’

‘And that was code that neither Morag nor I was able to find when we checked,’ Pagan said. I took this in. Well at least I think I understood.

‘That’s my point. These things, these gods – if their stuff is so far in advance of us then they could help.’

I could see the four hackers sharing a poor-naive-non-hacker look.

‘That’s not the way it works,’ Tailgunner said uncomfortably.

‘No, I know. They play it all mysterious and you guys jump when they tell you to.’

Cat and Mother were starting to pay attention now.

‘Wait a second,’ Tailgunner said angrily.

‘No, he’s right,’ Pagan said.

‘Anyone still think they are actually your gods?’ I asked.

There were a lot of uncertain looks except from Salem.

‘They are echoes, copies, nothing more,’ he said.

‘Wait a second. You’re talking about our faith here!’ Tailgunner objected.

‘No. You either have faith or you do not. You’re talking about proof. Either you feel God or you do not. You will only feel God if you go looking, if you accept and embrace Him,’ Salem said.

‘Or Her,’ Morag added. ‘You’re saying that all we’re talking about is dealing with programs?’ Salem nodded.

‘That still doesn’t help us. They don’t do our bidding and they are too powerful to coerce,’ Tailgunner pointed out.

‘So you hope for their scraps? What they deign to give you?’ Mother demanded. Tailgunner looked like he’d just been slapped. ‘I’m sorry, but Jakob’s right. You think if that was you down there I wouldn’t trample heaven to get you fixed?’ Yeah, I liked Mother. I could see Cat nodding as well.

‘Fine,’ Tailgunner said. Clearly it really wasn’t. ‘But that doesn’t change the fact that whatever they are, they won’t do what we say. We can’t even really communicate with them. They come and go as it pleases them.’

‘So they can’t be contacted or summoned?’ I asked.

‘There are ritual programs,’ Pagan told me. ‘They are complex and difficult to write, time-consuming and more often than not they don’t work.’

‘Shit, that won’t work. They’ll let Demiurge in, won’t they?’ That was the end of my plan, to the obvious relief of Tailgunner, Salem and Morag. Then I saw Pagan’s face. Pagan should never, ever play poker.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Ogham appeared in an isolated system,’ he said.

‘That’s impossible,’ Tailgunner said.