Authors: Gavin Smith
I wrapped my coat around me and tried to get some sleep. The heating cells that ran through the coat almost managed to keep out the cold and wet. The rhythmic movement over the rails was almost soothing.
Aldershot, eleven months ago
It was a farce. Normally the court martial would have been at Hereford and I would have been taken out behind the bogs and shot, but Mudge had kicked up such a shit storm in the press that they had to do it publicly. Mudge had also arranged for us to be lawyered up, which was technically legal under military law but a career-destroying social faux pas if you tried it. Fuck it, what career?
Most military towns are shitholes. Aldershot had made an attempt to outdo them all. It was like the rotting corpse of a military town that had been revived just long enough for this circus. On the other hand, a lot of vets lived in the area and many of them were protesting outside the ugly concrete building. I say protesting; they were going to riot if the verdict went against us. I think they probably did more to get us dishonourably discharged rather than shot for mutiny than our lawyers did
.
All of us were in manacles, except Mudge. One of his employers had paid for his bail in return for the print rights to the story. Vicar had been gagged as he just started screaming every chance he got, mainly at Rolleston. Rolleston was in the audience, sitting just behind the prosecutor’s desk. I think the media circus around the trial had also prevented us from being assassinated
.
Heavily sedated, it was Vicar’s turn to testify. He was helped up and had the conditions of his testimony read to him. He nodded and mumbled assent
.
‘Could you please tell us in your own words of the events that led to the mutiny on the
Santa Maria
?’ the prosecuting military lawyer asked
.
Vicar stared at me. ‘And there was a war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought Michael and his angels,’ he said
.
I saw the lawyer sigh. He had nobody but himself to blame: he had asked Vicar to use his own words
.
Then Vicar turned to stare at Rolleston. Sedated or not, the madness was back in his eyes. ‘I know where Satan has his throne! I know where Satan has his throne!’ He just kept screaming it again and again. Eventually he was restrained, but by then Rolleston had stood up and walked out of the room
.
I jerked awake. There had been a change in the rhythm of the train’s movement. I’d always wondered why nobody killed Vicar. He must have had something on them.
Getting out of the freight yard in Coventry wasn’t very subtle. It involved me riding very fast past angry security people, getting shot at and then forcing one of them to open the gate for me at gunpoint. Then there were more police and more running and hiding.
Even I was impressed by how much I’d managed to fuck up my easy life.
So, after retiring from gunfighting to start a career as a jazz hermit, I still somehow managed to find myself creeping through an old industrial estate on the edge of a really big hole.
Birmingham had been hit by one of the equatorial corporations during the FHC, using a fin-stabilised kinetic projectile launched from orbit. It had hit the city with the force of a reasonably sized meteorite, pierced the Earth’s crust and goodbye to the second largest city in the UK. After the FHC, orbital-launched kinetics, like nuclear weapons, were banned. It was too easy to crack the world open with them. We hadn’t even used them against Them. In retrospect that was probably due to the Cabal. If we’d used them, They would have learned how to grow them and use them on us.
The Brummies who’d survived the appalling devastation ended up in refugee camps on the outskirts of the huge crater that had once been their city. I guessed that this old industrial estate, mostly made up of warehouses, had been one of the camps. Their descendants were still here almost two hundred and fifty years later. Successive governments had promised to do something about the crater and the refugees but other uses had always been found for the money. Ash had grown up in a camp like this.
There wasn’t even a Ginza in Coventry. The centre of town was a mess of crumbling concrete controlled by the more heavily armed and violent refugees. We still called them refugees, even though this is where they had grown up for generation after generation.
I parked up, hid the bike as best I could and put my coat back on. I’d slung the smartgrip sheath for my Benelli automatic shotgun across my back and I had my bow in my hand, an arrow nocked, as I crept through the industrial estate. The bow was the quietest weapon I had. This was just a recce, I was telling myself. Just to see how much shit I would actually be in if I did try and get into the warehouse. For all I knew MI5 had already given the kill order for Vicar.
All the warehouses had been broken into and used for housing a long time ago. The rest of it was a tent city or lean-tos made of whatever material the refugees could scavenge. I saw people cooking rats. I saw tanks growing the protein gruel that poor people lived on, which I’d eaten many, many times when things were bad. I could see rag-clad children, the flames of trash fires reflected in their already dead eyes. If anything, this place was poorer than the Rigs. I was trying to be stealthy as I crept through the camp but they knew I was there. Coventry was a great place to hide things except from the people who lived there, but then I guessed they really didn’t matter to anyone.
I moved to the side of the crater. Even in the sparse moonlight, even in the light pollution of the flickering fires of the camp, the sheer scale of the crater was awesome. I was trying to maintain my professional detachment and concentrate on the task in hand but my attention kept on straying towards the hole, which was so deep I couldn’t see the bottom of it. It was a hole that contained the ghosts of over a million people.
The area around the warehouse used by MI5 was pretty much uninhabited. I guessed that any refugees who’d lived there had been moved on. There were a reasonable number of surveillance lenses set up in the surrounding area but I was able to avoid them. I guessed they couldn’t use motion detectors or other forms of early warning because of the hordes of rats that lived here.
I got closer. Still nothing and nobody. Rubbish blew through the streets and alleys. Finally, from an alley, I had the warehouse in sight. It was old, patched-up and almost stood out because of how nondescript they’d tried to make it look. The ghost town around it had already given it away.
I marked the security lenses. I probably couldn’t get to the warehouse without being seen. I couldn’t see any remotes or human guards. This suggested a trap. They must know I was coming. Both the police and MI5.
I tried to calculate how many people could be waiting for me in there. It was a small warehouse but I still didn’t like the odds. Also, if I went in, was I happy to start killing people? Well, it was pretty much a torture facility. I packed away my bow. There was nobody here that I would have to deal with quietly. Should I risk speaking to God? God might know the police’s planned response but there was a chance he would not know about MI5’s. I couldn’t see what difference going away and waiting would do other than give anyone who wanted it more time to track me down. The question was, did I abandon Vicar or not? I didn’t even know if he was alive.
On the other hand I had no plan beyond this. Where would I go? And it would be without Morag. I suppose I could try to fight my cause in court. The law was a joke and only enforced as and when people could be bothered. The police bothered to enforce it when they got hurt. Money or no money, I couldn’t see that ending well. Besides, I was bound to have numerous accidents while in custody.
Fuck it. Let’s get this over and done with. I strode down the alley and across the rubbish-strewn road towards the warehouse. I reached over my shoulder, drew the shotgun from its sheath and moved to the door, checking all around me as I went. So far no lights, sirens or guns.
I didn’t bother checking if the door was locked; I just slipped the lock burner into the reader. The burner I had was pretty good but I didn’t expect it to work here. I was pretty sure I was going to have to do something violent and noisy to break in. The burner took much longer than normal, but I was pleasantly surprised when the armoured door clicked open.
This was stupid. There was no way that they could not know I was here. I swept into the building, the Benelli up and ready, cycling between lowlight and thermographic view. Most of it was an open space. Towards one of the far corners I could see what looked like a hospital bed surrounded by all sorts of equipment. To my right there was a doorway. I checked the open space but did not advance further into it. I headed straight through the doorway.
I found myself in a comfortable living space. It looked to be set up for four people, but again there was nobody here. I guess this was where the staff lived. It also looked like they’d left recently. My mind screamed trap, but I was in here now so I had to check.
Back out into the main area of the warehouse. I didn’t want to think too much about the dark stains on the floor or the racks of horrific-looking instruments on the wall. Still checking all around, I headed towards the bed.
I suppose the emaciated mess of scar tissue covered by medpak-controlled medgels looked a little like Vicar. They’d properly worked him over, but it looked like it had been done a while ago and he’d just been left there to rot. Along with the various life-support equipment that was prolonging his existence, I noticed a sense machine next to the bed. A cable ran from the machine to one of the four plugs at the base of his neck. Sense technology was the ultimate in interrogation/torture technology. Any torture that could be imagined could be carried out and drawn out. An hour could seem like a year. And that’s before they start to play the head-fuck games – is it real or is it sense immersion? Made me wonder why they bothered with the physical stuff. Then again, I reckoned you had to be messed up in the head to do this sort of work. Maybe they just enjoyed it.
‘Jakob?’
I don’t mind admitting that I nearly jumped out of my skin and shot Vicar. The voice was tinny, modulated. It came from a speaker clipped to the head of the bed. I wasn’t sure whether it genuinely sounded like Vicar or I just wanted it to sound like him.
‘Vicar?’ I asked uncertainly.
‘I’m sorry, Jakob.’
Sorry? ‘What for?’
‘I talked, Jakob.’
‘Everyone talks, you know that.’
‘I held out as long as I could.’
‘It’s okay, we’re going to get you out of here.’ Yeah sure. I had no idea of how to even start going about that.
‘It wasn’t very long. They were hurting me.’
‘Don’t worry about it, man.’
He must either have been tranced into an isolated network or he was talking to me from inside a sense programme. That didn’t make a lot of sense. If they’d tortured him or just imprisoned his mind, why provide him with external communications?
‘I need to talk to you, Jakob.’
It was weird that he hadn’t quoted Revelations once.
‘We’ll get you sorted. Should I unplug you? From the sense machine, I mean.’
‘No, I need you to come in here.’
I stopped. Was this the trap?
‘There’s only me here, Vicar. I don’t think that’s a very good idea.’
‘Please, we need to talk. You need to know about Operation Spiral.’ Operation Spiral had been a joint US National Security Agency and UK Government Communications Headquarters project designed to hack Their comms structure. In effect to hack Their hive mind, not that it had been properly understood at the time. Thing is, it was old news for me.
‘I took the lock burner out of my anus,’ Vicar said.
I stopped my inspection of the medical equipment. That was a weird thing to bring up. He was right, the lock burner that I’d used to get into the cargo airlock on the
Santa Maria
during the mutiny had been in his arse. It was something that Vicar would definitely know. On the other hand, if he’d been extensively interrogated then his mind was an open book. But then why would an interrogator ask about that or even know enough to ask about that?
‘Okay,’ I said carefully. ‘So?’
‘So I need to speak to you, in here.’
‘It’s really not safe. Where are your interrogators?’
‘I’ve no idea. I’ve no idea of time. I’ve little idea of what’s real or not. In many ways nothing’s changed. Demons still roam the stars and you still owe me. In here. Now.’ It was starting to sound more like Vicar.
I found a doubled-ended jack and plugged one end into the sense machine. I looked at the other end. I hadn’t used sense since this whole mess started. I was trying to get to like the real world. It was a hard world to like. I reached behind my neck and felt the disconcerting click of the jack sliding into a plug embedded in my own flesh.
He was ready for me. I appeared as a very well-rendered icon. It was just me as I’d looked on the
Santa Maria
before this had all started. I was a bit thinner, a bit unhealthier-looking. I didn’t like it. There was even a pack of virtual cigarettes in the pocket of my combat trousers. I thought about having one because it wouldn’t hurt, but it would just make me want one back in the real world.