Authors: Gavin Smith
We walked across the landing pad towards a set of blast doors. There were more suited types with guns waiting for us. One was walking towards us, his arm outstretched.
‘Hold it right there, gentleman,’ he said. Mudge grabbed his outstretched arm, twisted it round and wrist-locked him so painfully the guy sank to the ground. I shook my head as the rest of the security contingent raised their weapons and started shouting.
‘Mudge,’ I said over the shouting, ‘he was being polite.’
‘I didn’t like his tone.’
‘He called us gentlemen. Let him go.’ Mudge gave this some thought but relented. The guy stood up, glaring at us and rubbing his wrist.
‘Are you a reasonable person?’ I asked him.
‘I was until about thirty seconds ago,’ he muttered, but he was gesturing at his security detail to calm down.
‘You want our weapons?’ I asked.
‘Obviously.’
‘It’s not going to happen. Besides which, you can’t disarm cybernetic weapons systems, and it would be no problem for us to take your weapons from you inside if we wanted to and use them. So you want us here, or Sharcroft does?’ He nodded. ‘Well, it depends on how much he wants to see us.’ He gave this some thought, or more likely he was receiving instructions.
‘We need to check you for information contamination,’ he said, relenting. I nodded. His tech guys approached and started waving various sensors at us.
‘Are you going to kill him?’ the security guy asked.
‘Not sure yet,’ I mused.
Through the blast doors was a large chamber with a low ceiling. The walls, floor and ceiling were covered in some kind of metal mesh. We were walking on a raised wooden platform. The room was full of what I recognised as servers in liquid coolant tanks, a lot of them. I did not know a lot about IT but even I knew that there were vast amounts of processing power in here. There was also a lot of solid-state memory.
Interspersed among all the hardware were various bits of institutional office furniture. People in one-piece suits were sat at desks, many of them tranced in, most with some form of visible integral computer system and all hard-wired into the hardware. None of them were using wireless links.
Many of the available surfaces had liquid-crystal thinscreens stuck to them. Though not the walls or the ceilings, I noticed. They, along with several detailed holographic displays, were showing information about the colonies. Or at least that’s what it looked like to me.
Mudge made a whistling noise as he blew air through his teeth.
‘This whole room is a Faraday cage,’ he said. It was a big room. ‘It’s designed to keep all surveillance out.’
It wasn’t just the mesh; I saw jamming and various other electronic countermeasures and counter-surveillance tech strategically placed around the room.
‘Lot of trouble to go to, to be free of God,’ Rannu commented.
‘Welcome to Limbo, gentlemen.’ It was the sort of voice that I associated with energetic old people. I knew this from old vizzes as I didn’t know any old people. It also sounded amplified.
I turned around to look at the villain of the piece. He looked the part, like the upper torso of a corpse in a high-tech armoured bath-chair. The chair had six sturdy metal legs rather than wheels and covered his legs. He didn’t move and barely seemed to be breathing despite the assistance of the life-support systems on the chair.
‘Though I prefer to think of it as a haven for atheists.’ The cheerful voice was coming from speakers built into the chair. I guessed this was Sharcroft. He looked dead long enough to be a Cabal old boy.
‘Why are you still alive?’ I asked.
‘You mean why didn’t the mob get me, Sergeant – or is it Mr Douglas now? I made a deal obviously.’
‘No. I mean after you’d lived out your natural lifespan in comfort bought with our suffering, why didn’t you just let yourself die?’
‘You mean what am I afraid of? I’m not the only one here who should be dead, am I?’ That was bad. He knew what I was. Of course he knew. That was the job of guys like him. I resisted the urge to start looking around for the dissection table.
‘Its over though,’ Mudge said. ‘Your rejuvenation through Themtech is not going to happen. You’re effectively dead anyway. Do everyone a favour and switch yourself off.’
‘Did you really only come here to revive old arguments?’
Mudge nodded towards me. ‘He came to see his bird.’ I resisted the urge to shoot Mudge. Just.
‘What’s Limbo for?’ Rannu asked before I could ask about Morag. ‘I mean other than hiding from God.’
‘Well, as you have pulled the teeth of every intelligence agency in the system—’
‘And wrecked your sordid little secret government,’ I added.
‘Quite a big secret government actually, Mr Douglas. You all but pushed the more clandestine facets of government back to using paper and filing cabinets.’
‘So this is a secure site for dirty little secrets so you sleazy little fuckers can start again?’ I asked.
He actually sighed. ‘If you like. It’s one of many made up of what we managed to salvage from your act of wanton terrorism. This particular site has one function.’ He paused. I think it was supposed to be dramatic. We waited. His voice sounded irritated when he started again. ‘It is the clandestine part of the war against the Cabal.’
We gave this some thought.
‘What silly twat put you in charge of it?’ Mudge asked.
‘I can assure you,’ and again he sounded irritated, ‘that there is quite a lot of oversight involved. After all, who better to know the machinations of the Cabal than a former member.’
‘What? You’re pissed off that Rolleston and Cronin fucked off with all your toys and left you here to die?’ I asked. On the corpse in the chair I thought I may have detected a slight change in expression.
‘Obviously.’
‘Well, best of luck and I’d advise you not to cross my path again,’ I told him. ‘I’d like to go home now.’
‘Don’t you want to finish the job you started?’ he asked.
‘Your mess – you clean it up,’ I told him. It wasn’t strictly true of course.
‘What did you want from us?’ Rannu asked.
‘We’re not taking this seriously, are we?’ Mudge asked. ‘I mean I know we do a lot of stupid things but he’s one of the bad guys.’
‘There’s a number of ways you can help us. Particularly you, Mr Douglas.’
I tried to ignore the relish in his voice but couldn’t help reaching up and touching my assault shotgun’s handgrip.
‘Like what?’ Here it comes.
‘I believe you’re hybrid? We believe that many of Rolleston’s Black Squadrons are either hybrids or otherwise augmented with Them biotech.’
‘What do you mean
you believe
? You fucking know because you were one!’ Mudge was getting angry.
‘So what if I am?’ I asked.
‘Well the data we could get from—’
‘Experimenting on me?’
I remembered Gregor’s warped features in his sealed chamber in the Cabal’s genetics lab deep in the Atlantis Spoke. I took a step towards Sharcroft, my hand now round the shotgun’s grip. Sharcroft didn’t give, but I was sure I could hear clicks and humming coming from his insectile chair. It was the sound of weapons systems readying themselves.
‘I fucking think not.’
‘You’re being selfish. You may have the answer we need.’
‘I’m being selfish? I didn’t start a war with an alien species just so I could become one of the living dead! And while we’re on the subject, what was the thinking behind that?’
‘I cannot justify the unjustifiable.’
‘What? That’s it? Fancy talk for I know I’m a cunt?’ I demanded.
‘We’re not talking about anything invasive—’
‘Would a fifty-calibre sabot round in the head be an emphatic enough no for you?’ I asked. I was genuinely in awe of this guy’s nerve.
‘Even if your capabilities are anything like Rolleston’s –’ now there was a thought ‘– we still have enough resources here to compel you to help.’
‘An achievement you’d enjoy posthumously, well more posthumously,’ Mudge told him. Rannu was glancing around, assessing the area, readying himself. I should have been doing the same but I was too angry.
‘There are other ways you could help,’ Sharcroft said after quite a tense pause.
‘Such as?’ Rannu surprised me by asking.
‘We’re sending people with your capabilities into the colonies to gather intelligence on the Black Squadron’s forces.’
‘Deep-penetration recces?’ I asked despite myself, I was so surprised. I did the sums. Depending on how quickly they had got themselves sorted out they could have put boots on the ground and, allowing for the speed that information travels across interstellar distances, i.e. the speed of a ship, they could already have info from the colonies. They might actually know what’s going on there.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t they be comms blind? They must have released Demiurge into the net in each of the colonial systems.’ That meant that any attempt to communicate would be compromised by a program with all of God’s power but none of its hands-off charm. If Demiurge worked then it meant that Rolleston, Cronin and their lackeys had control of every electronic system connected to the net. That meant just about every electronic system. This would make it difficult to operate, as even interpersonal communications would compromise them, let alone ship-to-ship or ship-to-surface comms.
‘According to our models Demiurge has indeed been released.’
‘Models?’ I demanded.
‘You haven’t heard back from anyone, have you?’ Rannu asked quietly.
‘Not as yet,’ Sharcroft confirmed.
‘Because it’s a fucking suicide mission,’ I spat.
These people made me sick. Come up with these bullshit ideas without any thought of the cost at the sharp end. Special forces operators weren’t cowards, far from it, but we deserved a chance at survival.
That aside, I was appalled at the sheer power of Demiurge and in turn the power handed over to Rolleston and Cronin. They had completely sewn up the four colonial systems.
‘Have you heard anything at all from the colonies since Rolleston escaped?’ Rannu again.
‘The only thing we’ve had from the colonies are ships that have come back with Demiurge in their systems,’ he said.
I was slightly suspicious of how open this guy was being with classified information. It was almost like he was sure that we were part of the team.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘God fought off Demiurge’s attack and the craft were destroyed.’
I was impressed. Good for you, Pagan and Morag. Then I started wondering where Morag was again.
‘Well there’s your answer then,’ I told him.
‘It’s not that simple,’ he replied. It never is, I thought. ‘God won because Demiurge only had the ships’ systems, with their limited memory and processing power, behind it. God had much larger resources.’
‘So Morag was right. Size is everything,’ Mudge cracked.
‘Time and a place, Mudge,’ I said. Mudge took the hint. ‘Well this is a fascinating insight into how much you’re fucking up the war effort but I … we’re retired. Best of luck.’ I turned to leave and then turned back. ‘How do we get out of here?’
‘Do you not want to get back at Rolleston?’ Sharcroft asked. His chair was rocking backwards and forwards on its six legs.
‘Do you even know where he is?’
‘We think—’
‘No! You’re fucking guessing. System maybe? Is he with the fleet? Is he on the ground? If so, which planet? Even if you know the planet they’re still fucking big things to search? Do you know exactly where he is? I’ll settle for a city. Because then all we’d have to do is infiltrate a planet, comms blind, fight our way past all his Themtech-enhanced super-troopers and then kill someone who can survive sustained fire from a Retributor. We’re retired.’
‘Assassination, sabotage, fostering resistance, getting the truth—’
‘Don’t say truth!’ I roared, completely losing it. Now everyone in the chamber not tranced in was staring at us. Many of the security types were fingering their weapons nervously. ‘It’s a fucking swear word in your mouth!’
‘Er … Jakob?’ Rannu said. I ignored him.
‘I said no and I mean go and fuck yourself!’
‘Hello, Jakob,’ Morag said. The blood or whatever I had in what was left of my veins froze. I turned to look at her.
She was wearing one of those ridiculous one-piece white suits. She was the only one who looked good in it. She was genuinely pretty, not attractive, not beautiful but pretty, though she looked older and harder than she had when I’d first met her not more than three months ago. She’d kept her hair short. It was spiky, almost boyish now. I tried not to wonder if it was a reaction to the forced femininity of her previous life as a rig prostitute.
I was so pleased to see her. I was so fucking angry to find her here.
Pagan was standing next to her. He looked ridiculous in his white one-piece. He also looked lost without his staff. It was as if they’d tried to rob him of his identity, his stature, by removing his neo-Druidic props and forcing him to dress in institutional chic.