Veteran

20

Why was nothing ever simple? Why did everyone have to turn simple things into competitions? Didn’t anyone want a quiet life? I’d taken one of the pills and then a stim to pep me up a bit.

‘Well, that went well,’ Pagan said. ‘Did you have to try and kick him?’ he asked Morag. ‘I thought he was about to open up.’ I’d brought the bike back over to where we were standing. Buck, Gibby and some of their friends were standing round Buck’s bike.

‘Which conversation were you listening to?’ Morag asked. ‘Besides, everyone else gets to be a macho arsehole.’

‘Not everyone, just Mudge,’ I said as I ran a diagnostic on the bike. It was a good bike as far as it went, but it wasn’t set up for racing like Buck’s would be. I wished I had my Triumph with me. I was a pretty good racer and could hold my own in scheme races back in Dundee, as long as I picked who I raced carefully, but if Buck rode like he flew then I was outclassed both in ware and skills. Still, could be fun, I thought, looking at the course.

‘Rannu kicked him,’ Mudge pointed out in his own defence.

‘Yeah that helped,’ I said.

‘He was being disrespectful,’ Rannu said. Morag smiled at him and gave him a hug. Just concentrate on the bike, I told myself.

‘If we went around attacking everyone who was disrespectful we’d never get anything done and you’d have to kill Mudge,’ I told Rannu.

‘Hey, I’m not you. I would’ve kicked his arse in New York,’ Mudge said, apparently seriously.

‘See!’ Morag said. I was as ready as I was going to get. The starting point looked like a ramp leading up onto the roofs of the terraced flats. There was a ramp on either side of the street. Buck had the right side of the street; I was expected to take the left.

‘What’s the betting he’s given himself the easier side of the street?’ I asked nobody in particular. Straddling the bike, engine idling, I walked it over to the starting line accompanied by fast-paced, heavy western guitar riffs and pounding drums. Buck didn’t even bother looking at me.

Try not to fuck up,’ Mudge said encouragingly.

‘What’s the signal to start the race?’ Morag asked while Buck roared up his ramp and onto the roof of the terraced flats, as one of the cyberbillys fired a flare into the air. I gunned the low rider up the ramp, accelerating so fast I was only just able to keep the front wheel down on the deck. The bike jumped slightly as I hit the top of the ramp onto the flat roof about three storeys above the ground. I then had to swerve violently to avoid a huge hole in the roof. I’m sure that would’ve been hilarious for the crowd.

I was heading for a low wall at speed. I noticed there was a small metal ramp up against it over to my right, I veered hard, only just managing to straighten up as I hit it. I was airborne again, the bike bouncing on its shocks when I landed. I could see Buck ahead of me and off to the left. Basically the roof of the terraced flats was a straight sprint. All I had to do was avoid debris and holes and use the ramps over the low dividing walls. Then Buck disappeared.

I changed up a gear as the bike accelerated, spending more time in the air off the ramps and bouncing further when I hit the ground. Plugged into the bike I saw its performance in numbers on my internal visual display and could feel it in my head. I tried to get the feeling of merging with it like I did with my Triumph, but this wasn’t my bike and it wasn’t as elegantly engineered as the Triumph.

I hit the next wall and screamed as there was no roof on the other side of it. I hit a down-sloping ramp fighting for control of the low rider. The ramp took me into the interior of the flats. I hit the bottom of the ramp, swerving to avoid an interior wall and then riding through the next in an explosion of plaster, again only just staying on the bike. Ahead of me I could make out the course, a series of chicanes defined by interior walls and holes in the floor. I swerved from one side to another, getting down as low as I could in the cramped space. I didn’t like the give the floor had beneath my bike. Then I remembered I was dying anyway and sped up. Leaning down low over one of the holes in the floor, I could see it went down further than two storeys and into the sewers below. I swerved the other way, the top of my head just clipping the interior wall. I barely felt it. Part of the floor gave way behind my bike, and I felt it slow, but the wheel caught and I was away. I realised I was smiling as I hit the up ramp. I soared into the air as I came out of the flats back onto the roof. Buck was closer now.

I throttled down as we approached an intersection in the road. I hit the ramp at speed and was in the air over some of the crowd, who cheered as both of us went by overhead. Buck landed first, I landed soon after. There were vehicles keeping pace with us; I noticed that our muscle car was one of them.

On the new roof the dividing walls had narrow passages knocked through them, the holes had been patched and there was little rubble. I pushed the bike faster, coaxing it as I saw red lines appear in my vision. This was going to be the last chance to really get my speed up. The terrain became a blur around me. I had enough presence of mind to make sure the way was clear; the rest of it was focused on the ramp ahead. I was sure I was grinning now, the nausea a distant memory, the first sores on my scalp as meaningless as pissing blood this morning.

I hit the ramp. I felt like I was in the air forever: everything slowed down as the tower block loomed larger and larger in my field of vision. The jarring bump, the bounce, the fight for control – don’t lose speed. I was in the high-rise building for seconds, if that. The path that had been cut and cleared through the building was just a blur as I hit the next ramp and was in the air again.

Then the next tower block and the next, each time throttle down, keep speed as high as possible. Each time going a little higher, each time bouncing as I landed, trying to control the bike and not hit the ceiling. Sometimes I was aware of Buck’s bike to the left of me in the same building or as we flew through the air – he seemed a little closer each time I saw him.

This was what my boosted reflexes were made for; you couldn’t do this without augmentation. This was why we were different from the herd. Maybe Buck was right: this was what mattered. Land, control, throttle down, speed up, not even thinking about how high off the ground we were as we leapt from high-rise building to high-rise building.

The hole in the side of the tower block coming towards me was too low. I was too high. I’d taken off too fast. I slammed myself down on the bike, cursing the high handlebars on low riders. I felt my duster scrape against the top of the hole. I was going too fast but if I braked now I’d wipe out. I’d seen people do it in the schemes in Fintry, just jump straight into a wall at one hundred-plus miles an hour. The wheels bounced and finally found traction as I sped between the supports of the building.

I was in the air again. Buck was behind me somehow. It happened so slowly I had the time to take in the view of the ruins of Trenton below me and appreciate just how high forty storeys up was. It was the roof of the last tower block I was heading for. I overshot, landing in the middle of the roof, moving at speed towards the edge, way too fast to stop. I didn’t think, I just ditched the bike. My bike was moving away from me in a shower of sparks as I slid along, the rough concrete roof going though my duster, then my clothes, then my skin, yet again. I heard protesting tyres skidding behind me as I followed my bike off the edge of the tower block.

The bike flew in a long graceful arc out over the city. It seemed to take a long time to fall. I was watching it fall away from me. I slid off the roof, just managing to grab a piece of the rusted metal frame that ran through the crumbling concrete. I stopped suddenly. Had I grabbed it with my left I would’ve gone over but I’d grabbed it with my right and locked the metal fingers of my prosthetic arm around the metal. The metal tore itself out of the concrete in a shower of dust and I dropped, but it held. As did my arm, but only just. It was still healing from when Rannu had torn it off and I felt the gel around the new join give, as did the join itself slightly, and blood was running down my neck and chest.

More concrete dust showered down on me as Buck skidded to a halt on the roof’s edge in time to see the end of my bike’s swan dive. I think I spoilt his enjoyment at seeing my bike smash through the roof of an old bus station by screaming a lot. He lit up a joint and dragged deeply.

‘A little help, please,’ I gasped. Buck looked down at me.

‘Oh yeah.’ He pushed the kickstand down with a cowboy boot, got off the bike and knelt down on the edge of the roof. He leant down and placed the lit joint in my mouth.

‘Thanks,’ I said around the joint.

‘Let’s talk,’ he said, grinning.

One of the Commancheros had been a medic on Lalande. I think I needed to get my own medic to follow me around.

‘Can you do anything without fucking yourself up?’ Mudge asked. I had to admit that Mudge’s sense of humour was beginning to get on my nerves. We were sat back in the concrete square. The right side of my body had been cleaned, the bits of clothing, roof and rad-proofed material picked out of the wound. The gel and the pak on my shoulder join had been reset and much of me was covered in new skin and medgel.

‘Hey, I won,’ I pointed out.

‘Almost beat me to the ground as well,’ Buck said, smiling. ‘Joe, give us a moment,’ he said to the medic once the guy had finished. The cyberbilly nodded at me and headed off. We were sitting round a jet-black muscle car with tinted windows. Air intakes stuck through the hood and the suspension was heavy duty and raised. The car belonged to Gibby judging by the way he fussed over it. Buck and Gibby were with us. Mrs Tillwater had gone back to rejoin Crawling Town after we’d assured her that we were going to play nicely. I sat on the bonnet despite Gibby’s complaints. Mudge sat on some rubble nearby with Rannu and Pagan. Morag seemed both worried that I’d hurt myself again and pissed off that I’d destroyed the bike. Buck was still sitting on his bike and Gibby had sat down on the ground with his back to one of the car’s polished wheels.

‘So let’s hear it,’ Mudge said.

‘What do you want to know?’ Gibby asked.

‘Where’s MacDonald?’ Mudge asked.

Buck looked at him as if he was an idiot. ‘How the hell are we supposed to know that?’ he asked.

‘Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,’ I said. I wanted to hear this from the start or maybe I just wanted to put off a decision I would have to make about Gregor. ‘Why were you ferrying Rolleston and the Grey Lady around?’ I asked.

‘They’d received intelligence that when the Ninjas went in they would try and infect at least one of the people they attacked,’ Gibby told us.

‘What did they infect them with?’ I asked.

‘You tell me,’ Buck said. ‘You saw as much as we did, more. Looked like they infected people with themselves.’ He was right.

‘Did Rolleston know why?’ Mudge asked.

Gibby shrugged. ‘There were a number of theories: some kind of disease-based warfare, to take them over, breeding… Who knows? There’s a reason we call Them aliens. I’m not sure we’re going to help you fellas.’

‘What did Rolleston want with an infected human?’ I asked. Buck answered me this time.

‘When they turn into puddles their genetic make-up is junked and they destroy themselves rather than be captured. Rolleston figured that if they infected a human then at least part of them would be intact-’

‘And they could study them,’ Pagan finished. Buck got up, went to the back of Gibby’s car and popped the boot.

‘Beer?’ he asked everyone. Even Rannu said yes.

‘I don’t get it,’ Mudge said when we all had our beers. ‘Why’d he ask a pair of degenerate cocksuckers like you to do his driving?’ I had to wonder about his interview technique – I mean professionally. as a journalist. I wasn’t really surprised that he’d never ended up interviewing celebrities or politicians.

‘Your mother recommended us,’ Buck said.

‘I could see my mother recommending you have a bath, but really. I mean why use Yanks?’

"Cause the 160th are good,’ Buck said. This wasn’t just transatlantic banter. Mudge had a point: why hadn’t Rolleston kept it in the family?

‘So’s 47 Squadron and the CHF,’ I said, meaning the Commando Helicopter squadron.

Gibby sighed. ‘They are.’ Buck glared at him. ‘But we were air and space force before we transferred into the army. Part of the Special Operations Wing.’

‘So?’ Mudge asked. Sometimes I forgot that Mudge wasn’t actually military.

‘I get it,’ I said. Mudge and Morag turned to look at me. Pagan had already worked it out and Rannu didn’t seem to care.

‘They don’t just fly gunships and copters; they’re trained to pilot spacecraft as well,’ Pagan said.

‘And interface stuff like assault shuttles,’ Gibby added.

‘You can fly spacecraft and you chose to fly gunships?’ I asked. Flying spacecraft was the more prestigious job. Gunship pilots at the end of the day were just infantry taxi drivers. Buck let out a snort of derision and Gibby smiled.

‘Spaceships are boring. Here’s some black, here’s some more black,’ Gibby began. ‘But flying two metres above the ground at six hundred-plus clicks, watching a tracer firework display with crystal setting your veins on fire, that’s fun.’ Buck nodded his agreement.

‘You boys miss the war?’ Morag asked. At first I thought Buck was going to take offence – it wasn’t a question that most vets like to hear – instead he smiled.

‘Naw, miss the toys though.’ He lit up a cigarette and I nicked one off him.

‘Rolleston take you out-system?’ Mudge asked.

‘Couple of times, but you know how fast information moves out there. I think he had other teams in the other colonies looking for the same thing. It was mostly in-system stuff and we were always too late until that Foreign Legion unit went down and he decided to use the Wild Boys as bait,’ Gibby answered.

‘Who was he taking orders from?’ I asked. Gibby shrugged but Buck answered.

‘We don’t know, but I’ll tell you this: he was outside the chain of command. I once saw him give a full air force colonel an order and get it obeyed. He didn’t like working with us none, though.’

‘No?’ I asked.

‘Can’t imagine why,’ Mudge said. ‘Two such sweet guys like you.’

‘Son,’ Buck said, ‘you keep banging your gums together like that and I’m going to kick your ass so bad you’ll get to wear it as a hat.’

Mudge opened his mouth to counter threaten. I said, ‘Mudge, give it a rest, will you?’ He looked like he was going to argue but decided to remain quiet. Buck was busy staring at Mudge so Gibby took up the story.

‘Like I said, we had the skill set he needed, but I think they were setting up their own people.’

‘A private army?’ Pagan asked, leaning into the conversation and taking an interest.

Gibby shrugged. ‘Mebbe. He definitely wanted to keep it in-house.’

‘Like the XIs?’ I asked. Buck and Gibby looked at me blankly.

‘The whole XI thing doesn’t seem to be working too well for Rolleston,’ Pagan said, nodding at Rannu and me. I had to agree with him.

‘So why hasn’t he sent his army after us?’ I asked. ‘Why just the XIs?’

‘Because we’re not important enough,’ Pagan said.

‘So what is?’ I asked.

‘You feeling unwanted?’ Mudge asked.

‘Not really,’ I said.

‘It would suggest that this God thing is all bollocks,’ Mudge said. Pagan glared at him. ‘I’m serious, man. The alien is dead, that seems to be all he cares about. We’re just loose ends that the XIs and the Fortunate Sons will deal with eventually. If Rolleston wanted you dead you would be. Thinking you’re more important than that is just delusions of grandeur. You’ve pissed him off but you’re not the big threat you think you are.’

‘Whereas you are?’ Rannu asked. Mudge turned around to look at the Nepalese.

‘I don’t know. The Grey Lady comes to me and asks me to mind my own business or she’ll kill me, and I tend to believe her, but that’s the thing, see? I’m a pain in the arse.’ I found myself nodding with everyone else present. ‘Not a huge threat. I think we may have lost some perspective.’

‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But we are running around with an alien, even if it’s only an alien information form. That is potentially a serious threat to Earth security.’

‘You’ve got a what?’ Buck asked, swapping a look of confusion with Gibby.

‘I guess Rolleston either doesn’t care or doesn’t know about that,’ Mudge said.

‘So what do you suggest?’ Pagan asked.

‘Keep a low profile and die of liver failure,’ Mudge answered. That appealed to me. Even coming to some kind of an accord with Rolleston appealed to me.

‘So what happened to your friend?’ Morag asked. I turned to look at Buck and Gibby.

‘After we left you guys-’ Buck began.

‘To die,’ Mudge added. I glanced over at him. He just shrugged but remained quiet.

‘We had a mid-air rendezvous with a transport shuttle. In orbit we docked with Rolleston’s ship-’

‘He had a ship?’ I asked, surprised. Pagan let out a low whistle. That was serious resources. Buck looked pissed off with yet another interruption.

‘What was the name of the ship?’ Pagan asked.

‘HMS Steel.’

‘Frigate class, fitted out for stealth operations,’ Pagan said. It was the sort of ship that special forces types tended to operate off.

‘Anyway,’ Buck tried again, ‘we were still in orbit waiting for clearance to set sail. We were using some of the bigger ships for cover from Them’s fleet and surface bombardment when the call comes through that you two had made it off Dog 4.’ I already knew this. Rolleston had given the command to dump us.

‘So what? Tell me about Gregor.’

Thing you’ve got to know is the gunship and the transport shuttle, all of them, were set up for bio containment. They were ready for what happened to your friend.’

I flicked the cigarette away, resisting the urge to cough in case I didn’t like what came up. I was feeling quite weak; I’d need another stim soon.

‘So where’d you take Gregor?’ Mudge asked.

‘Back to Sol, the Atlantis Spoke,’ Gibby answered. ‘We took the whole of the transport into the biggest cargo elevator.’

‘That the last you saw of it?’ I asked. Gibby nodded. I could see the disappointment on Mudge’s face. It meant nothing. The Spokes were entrepots. They were connected to the entire transport infrastructure of Earth. If Gregor was still alive he could be anywhere. I heard Pagan sigh.

‘Give me the exact date and time,’ Pagan said in a resigned tone of voice.

‘Can you do anything with that?’ I asked him.

‘Maybe.’

‘Do you want help?’ Morag asked.

‘It’ll just be sifting through data, little hacking involved, pretty boring.’

‘I have to learn that too.’

‘That it?’ Mudge asked. He was visibly pissed off. Buck and Gibby gave the question some thought and seemed to come to an unspoken agreement.

‘Not quite,’ Buck said. We all turned to him expectantly.

‘Go on,’ I urged.

‘Look, man, your friend is more than likely fucked. Why you doing this?’ Buck asked.

‘Stupid question,’ Rannu said.

I pointed at Gibby. ‘He goes down in a burning gunship, what do you do?’ I asked. Buck nodded.

‘MacDonald might still be on the Spoke, or at least I’m pretty sure he was kept there for a while,’ Gibby said.

‘Why?’ Mudge asked.

‘For one thing, the elevator took the transport way down below sea level. It went straight past the flight decks, and docks.’

‘So?’ I asked. ‘They could’ve taken him out by submarine, slow but stealthy.’

‘Or used the Mag Levs,’ Mudge suggested.

‘And there were people there waiting for us,’ Buck added.

‘That doesn’t mean anything either,’ Mudge said.

‘Maybe so, but I overheard one of them mention the facility. Way he said it made me think that it was in the Spoke,’ Buck said.

‘That’s pretty thin,’ Mudge said. Buck shrugged.

‘I’ll see if we can corroborate any of this,’ Pagan said.

‘It is pretty thin. Thing is. Bran overheard this guy. I saw her look between him and me,’ Buck said. Silence followed.

‘So?’ Morag said finally.

‘She was going to kill him,’ I said. Buck nodded.

‘That’s when we decided to haul ass,’ Gibby said.

‘That was when you deserted?’ I asked. The pair nodded. We all lapsed into silence for a bit, just thinking, or at least I assumed everyone else was. Gibby went to the cool box in the boot of his car and got everyone another beer.

‘So what do we do with this?’ Mudge asked finally. The sky was beginning to darken and we were being treated to an incredible light show of purples and reds in the pollution. Some of the cyberbillys were heading back to Crawling Town. The rest seemed to be intent on partying in the ruins of Trenton. Campfires started to appear as the vehicles were parked so they could be better watched. I looked over at where I’d seen the tribeswoman, but of course she’d gone and my tolerance for cyberbilly music had been reached and breached some time ago. Didn’t these people have any pre-FHC jazz?

‘If I were you, I’d mourn your friend and let it go,’ Buck said. ‘There’s no good result I can think of for what happened to him.’

I was beginning to think he was right.

‘Maybe not,’ Morag said. I looked up at her. She had a thoughtful expression on her face but I found myself wishing that her hair would grow back faster. That said, even with her hair that short she was very attractive. And very young, the muted voice of my conscience managed to remind me.

‘Morag, I don’t mean to be rude but what could you possibly know about this?’ I asked.

‘Intuition?’ she suggested hopefully. There was a snort of derision from Mudge.

‘You’ve been talking to it again?’ Pagan asked disapprovingly.

‘Talking to what?’ Gibby asked suspiciously.

‘Maybe we should discuss this later,’ I suggested.

Mudge pointed at Morag. ‘She’s got an alien in a box, and he,’ Mudge pointed at Pagan, ‘wants to use it to make God.’ Pagan came off the ground, his face livid with anger.

‘What the fuck are you trying to do?’ he demanded. I felt pretty pissed off myself.

‘It’s a fucking stupid idea, a fantasy. Who gives a fuck? Nobody’s going to believe us, and even if they do they’re just going to assume that we’re mad.’

‘Mudge, you’ve made your point. Just keep your mouth shut, okay?’ I told him.

‘Yes, sir,’ he snapped.

‘We should listen to the girl,’ Rannu said.

‘Are you boys like a cult or something?’ Gibby asked, he was sounding even more confused.

‘You’re only a couple of consonants out there, as in shower of,’ Mudge said.

‘Are you finished?’ Morag asked. Mudge nodded. ‘Look, I don’t know anything for sure. When we try to communicate it doesn’t always make sense,’ she said.

‘What doesn’t?’ Gibby asked, completely bewildered.

‘Assuming it’s not trying to influence you,’ Pagan said.

‘What do you mean you’re all trying to make God?’ Buck asked.

‘You must try to seek understanding from what it says. It chose you for a reason,’ Rannu said.

‘It got delivered to the same whorehouse – whoreboat!’ I shouted as I found myself unable to put up with this pseudo-mystical bullshit.

‘The girl’s a whore?’ Buck asked, his face lighting up as he finally found something he could understand. Both Morag and I glared at Buck.

‘Shut up,’ I told Buck.

‘I think it was trying to communicate,’ Morag said.

‘Are you boys a cult that worships a whore?’ Buck asked with a look of dawning enlightenment on his face.

‘What?’ I asked him, unable to follow his reasoning. No, we’re not a fucking cult.’

‘And stop calling me a whore,’ Morag added. ‘Or, or, or I’ll do something violent.’

‘Well now I’m scared,’ Buck said, grinning. ‘How much, darlin’?’

‘I’ll do something violent,’ I said. Rannu also sat forward, ready to move.

Morag turned on me. I can look after myself!’ I was somewhat taken aback by this; I was after all just trying to help.

‘What makes you think it was trying to communicate?’ Pagan asked, ming to steer the conversation back to something productive.

‘Ambassador said that what we call the Ninjas were an earlier form of what he was. They were designed to try and communicate with us.’

‘Who’s the Ambassador?’ Gibby asked.

‘The alien,’ Mudge answered.

‘Then why kill Ash and Shaz and have a good try at taking Mudge and me out?’ I asked. I remembered it holding Shaz’s head in its hand, studying it.

Morag shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You all got an alien?’ Gibby asked. I nodded, not even thinking about it.

‘An alien whore?’ Buck asked. Mudge started laughing.

‘What?’ I turned to the redneck. He looked confused.

Buck pointed at Morag. ‘Did she fuck the alien?’

Mudge grinned and turned around to look at Morag. ‘What an interesting question,’ he said, ignoring my glare.

‘No!’ Morag shouted. ‘I didn’t fuck the alien, okay!’ Some of the cyberbillys at a nearby campfire looked in our direction.

‘All right, keep it down,’ I hissed, and then pointed at Buck and Gibby. ‘You two shut up and Mudge, stop winding Morag up.’

‘It makes sense,’ Pagan said.

‘What does?’ I asked incredulously.

‘If all you know is violence how would you try and communicate?’ he asked. My mind reached for this concept. It was a bit more complex than my usual relationship with Them. Fortunately it seemed to catch Mudge’s attention.

‘But why kill everyone else?’ he asked.

‘To find someone worthy,’ Pagan said. I could see Rannu nodding.

‘Why try and communicate?’ I asked.

‘Because they want peace,’ Morag said.

‘The alien whores want peace?’ Buck asked.

‘You high?’ I asked.

‘Normally.’ Gibby answered for him.

‘So are you. Give him a break,’ Mudge said. He’d wanted to kill them a couple of hours ago.

‘Or they’ve gotten smart,’ I said to Morag, trying to ignore Mudge again.

‘It would be a strange attack. With what I saw Ambassador do in the net it could’ve made a real mess if it chose to,’ Pagan said, and I had to agree with him.

‘Only if it properly understood the concept. They’re alien; maybe they just don’t understand the net and its importance,’ Mudge pointed out.

‘Assuming you’re right,’ I said to Pagan and Morag, ‘what does that make Gregor?’

Pagan shrugged. ‘At a guess, a hybrid trying to find a way to facilitate communication.’

‘Hands across the stars, beautiful really,’ Mudge said.

‘That’s some guess,’ I said.

I received an encrypted comms burst from Pagan; ‘It is and isn’t. I believe that MacDonald was a physical version of what is happening to Morag. In effect Morag is a beta and cerebral version of MacDonald.’ I stared at him.

Morag saw me staring and turned on Pagan. ‘You think I’m a hybrid?’ she demanded. Pagan looked shocked and then appalled.

‘You broke that?’ he asked. His voice sounded small. He was genuinely scared. ‘How could you have broken that?’ he said more to himself than any of us. From what little I knew of hacking, if she had done what Pagan said she’d done then it was possible, hard but possible. The thing was it took a very long time. Morag stood up. She had tears in her eyes.

‘Is she an alien whore?’ Buck asked, pointing at Morag. This time he wasn’t quick enough to get out of her way. I heard his nose break and saw blood squirt down his beard.

‘Fucking bitch!’ he howled.

‘Here we go again,’ I muttered.

Buck reached for one of his revolvers. Rannu had a Glock in each of his hands. One was pointing at Buck, the other wasn’t exactly pointing at Gibby but was close enough for Gibby to get the message.

Morag turned on Rannu. ‘I told you I can look after myself!’ And she stormed off. Rannu let her get a way off and then started to follow at a safe distance, which I had to admit made me feel a little better. Mudge watched them go.

‘So?’ he asked.

‘What you want to do?’ I asked.

‘I want to go and get Gregor but I want to do it on more than the say-so of a teenage whore,’ he said. I felt angry but I felt more tired. I reached into what was left of one of my pockets, removed another stim patch and slapped it onto the wrist of my left arm.

‘Feeling all right?’ Mudge asked.

‘Brilliant. Don’t call her a whore again,’ I told him.

‘Your judgement’s affected. You’re not thinking straight.’

‘Fucking bitch broke my nose,’ Buck whined. We ignored him.

‘That’ll be the radiation sickness,’ I said.

‘No, that’ll be the girl,’ Mudge said. Gibby was watching us intently. ‘Look, even if she’s right and Gregor’s a hybrid, so what? That doesn’t mean he’s benevolent, that doesn’t mean he’s Gregor. It means you’ve got a trained special forces soldier with some of the capabilities of one of Their Ninjas. You want to release that?’

‘No I want to go and see it, him. Look, if that’s the case they’ll have him contained. We’ll put him out of his misery. It won’t be like Dog 4,’ I said. Mudge considered this and pointed after Morag.

‘We don’t even know whose side she’s on,’ he said. I think on some level I knew he was right. I also thought that this was one of the reasons I liked Mudge: he could be a wanker but he did force you to look at the truth.

‘I trust her,’ I said. It sounded false even to me and I wanted to believe it.

‘No, you want to fuck her, which is different.’

‘You fucking pussy,’ Buck said, pinching his nose to stem the blood.

Mudge looked up at the cyberbilly. ‘What?’

‘You go into Atlantis, what’s the worst that happens?’ he asked. ‘You get killed.’

‘No,’ Mudge corrected him. ‘The worst that happens is we get captured, get put into a sense booth and tortured for the next hundred years.’

‘So we shoot ourselves first,’ I said, grinning. ‘We’re not doing anything better.’

Mudge sighed and went to get another beer from Gibby’s cool box. ‘I really, really want to die of liver failure,’ he said as he opened the beer and downed it in one before helping himself to another.

‘You still have your original liver?’ I asked him.

‘No,’ he said. Which would mean his artificial liver would be much more efficient at breaking down alcohol, like mine. It still let you get drunk because if it didn’t the British army would’ve mutinied in its entirety years ago, but it stopped the alcohol from doing permanent damage.

‘So how are you going to die of liver failure?’ I asked him.

‘I’m going to try very hard,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need Balor’s help.’

‘To die of liver failure?’ I asked, momentarily confused. Like I said, I wasn’t feeling the greatest. Mudge stared at me like I was an idiot.

‘We’ll help,’ Gibby said. I looked up at him in surprise, as did Mudge.

‘The hell we will!’ Buck shouted.

‘Oh come on now. Buck, she’s not the first whore who bust your nose,’ Gibby said.

‘Could everyone please stop calling Morag a whore?’ I said angrily.

‘Yeah, thanks for the offer, guys. You were so helpful the last time,’ Mudge said sarcastically.

‘You know we didn’t have a choice. You had to follow Rolleston’s orders when he gave them as well,’ Gibby said.

‘He’s right,’ I said.

‘Can we leave them somewhere dangerous?’ Mudge asked.

‘Fuck them!’ Buck shouted. He looked appalled at Gibby. ‘We ain’t helping them.’

Gibby turned on him. ‘We sold them out, man, you know that.’ Buck said nothing. ‘We have to make this right.’ Buck looked like he was about to argue but didn’t. Gibby had surprised me. I could understand me and Mudge and even Rannu being up for this. Mudge had his loyalty to the Wild Boys and Rannu to the Regiment, and that was something that rightly or wrongly we were indoctrinated with. Presumably Gibby had similar loyalty and indoctrination, but not to us, and that wasn’t what he was talking about anyway. He wanted to help us because he thought it was the right thing to do. He had nothing to gain from it. I wasn’t used to that kind of morality. Most of the time it was every man for himself, and most of the time it had to be that way to survive. The surprising thing was that Buck seemed to agree with Gibby, even though he was pissed off about it. I wondered where these two had picked up their values. Maybe they weren’t quite the arseholes I’d taken them for. We could probably use them if we were going to Atlantis – if nothing else, we’d need taxi drivers. I was beginning to form a plan but I’d need more intel.

‘Mudge?’ I said after thinking for a while.

‘Yeah?’

‘Can you stop trying to piss everyone off?’

‘No,’ he said, smiling. I looked over at Pagan. He was quiet and I assumed he’d been in the net, but he hadn’t. He looked scared.

‘You okay?’ I asked him. He just looked at me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d asked me to burn Morag at the stake.

I found Rannu standing away from one of the fires. Casually concealed.

‘Where is she?’ I asked. He nodded at the fire. Morag was standing by the fire but away from the rest of the people warming themselves. I walked towards her.

‘Jakob?’ Rannu said. I turned on him, assuming he was about to say something about Morag.

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ I spat. He was mostly getting my spite from the previous conversation with everyone. Rannu remained as impassive as ever.

‘I was going to say… the sickness,’ he said.

‘What about it?’ I asked.

‘It’s no way for a warrior to die.’ I wasn’t sure: maybe he looked sad or maybe it was the flickering shadows thrown by the fire.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘And call me a warrior again and I’ll shoot you in the back just to prove a point.’ Rannu smiled. ‘Can you leave us?’ I asked him. He seemed to ponder my request and maybe he was considering me and the kind of person I was. Whatever he was thinking, it seemed like a long time before he nodded and walked back towards Gibby’s car.

‘Hey,’ I said as I approached the fire. Morag looked up; she’d obviously been crying.

‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Come to spend some time with the hybrid whore? Give me five hundred euros and I’ll suck your cock.’ She turned back to the fire blinking away tears. With impact-resistant plastic instead of eyes, I wasn’t able to cry; hearing that I wished I could. I sat down cross-legged next to her and drew a burning stick from the fire, using it to light a cigarette. I thought about what had happened. She was eighteen years old, and a group of men with a combined age of over one hundred and fifty had effectively ganged up on her to give her a hard time. That wasn’t what it had seemed like at the time, but in retrospect that was what had happened. Why would they, why would we, do that?

‘They’re frightened,’ I said, looking up at her. She glanced down at me but went back to staring in the fire. ‘We’re frightened,’ I corrected myself. ‘Well maybe not Buck and Gibby; they’re just arseholes.’

‘Mudge is as well.’

‘Yes, but he’ll die for you,’ I said with certainty.

‘Huh?’

‘He’s just like that with his friends. I suspect he tries to keep their numbers low by behaving like a prick, and he’s also frightened.’ She turned and looked at me.

‘Do you think I’m a hybrid?’ she asked.

‘You’re prettier than Them,’ I said, and straight away knew I’d said the wrong thing. How was it she was eighteen and smarter than me?

‘And that’s it, isn’t it? I shouldn’t fucking bother trying to make things better for myself or anyone else. I should just lie on my back and be happy with the… the… fucking commodity that I’ve got, yeah?’ she spat.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Tell me something, Jakob. Do you miss me being afraid? Do you miss the frightened little made-up girl-whore you found on the Rigs?’

I hadn’t realised until she said it that it wasn’t the hooker I missed, but the feeling that I was protecting her, looking after her. It must have been written all over my face.

‘You cunt,’ she said, shaking her head, and turned to walk off. I sat up slightly and swept the legs out from under her. She cried out as she landed on the concrete on her arse. We were beginning to draw attention from some of the others around the fire. I stared at a couple of them; my eyes would’ve been black pools not even reflecting the flames. People went back to their own business. I hadn’t been paying attention and only just managed to block Morag’s straight-arm strike.

‘Okay, great, Morag. You’ve got some hand-to-hand softskills, we’re all very impressed.’ I turned to look at her. She was angry now.

‘Out of my league, am I? Want to teach me a lesson in helplessness? Do you not think I’ve had enough of those?’

‘I’m sorry!’ I shouted more out of desperation than anything else. ‘What do you want me to do about it? Sometimes we’re all going to be helpless in situations that we can’t do anything about, and in the circles you’re travelling in at the moment I’m afraid you’re going to meet a lot of people more dangerous than you.’

‘Only physically,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t so long ago that you were the helpless one and it was me that was doing the rescuing and, guess what? We managed it without violence.’ She was right. The hackers were the dangerous ones; all I was was a weapon.

‘And we’re back to where we started. We’re scared of you,’ I said softly, and lapsed into silence. We sat there staring at the fire for a while. Eventually Morag produced my bottle of whisky from her bag.

‘You left it back at Crawling Town,’ she said, taking a swig and passing it to me.

‘That was careless of me.’ I took a long pull. I welcomed the burn down my throat; my stomach was less sure but I bit down on the nausea. I reached into my pocket for one of the pills that Papa Neon had given me to help cope with the symptoms, keep me going to the last. I hoped that Morag hadn’t noticed. I washed it down with another pull of whisky.

‘You want to fuck me,’ Morag said. It wasn’t a question, she almost sounded resigned. I shook my head. I was starting to feel angry.

‘What am I supposed to say to that?’ I asked her.

‘You could admit it – admit that you think I owe you.’ I turned to look at her. She was watching me, the glow of the flames reflected on her pale skin.

‘I want you. You don’t owe me a fucking thing,’ I said and got up. I wasn’t sure who I was more disgusted with. Yes, I was. It was me. How was she supposed to respond to this? How was I any different to any of her old johns? I was just another dirty old man and I needed to stay away from her. I started to walk away.

‘I’m not an alien,’ she said. I stopped. ‘Bring the whisky back.’ I sat back down, weak in every way. ‘Will you hold me?’ she said. I pulled her close. Was this what I wanted? She felt so small and vulnerable. I realised that I didn’t want her to be scared or hurt. That was pretty much the best I could do. I didn’t know what it meant. ‘We talk, or we try to,’ she said, confusing me.

‘Who?’ I asked, wondering if she meant us.

‘Ambassador.’

‘You realise you can do things you shouldn’t be able to,’ I told her. She looked up at me.

‘I’m good, I mean really good. It’s not just Ambassador; I was born for this,’ she said.

‘I believe you, but Pagan’s not just professionally jealous, he’s genuinely scared. He thinks that Ambassador is, I don’t know, changing you or controlling you.’ She didn’t say anything. ‘Morag?’

‘Ambassador’s just information,’ she said. ‘Pagan thinks I’m possessed or something.’ She was hiding something. ‘He thinks I’m the Whore of Babylon,’ she finally said.

‘Huh?’ I asked, sounding ever so intelligent.

‘That I have truck with demons.’

‘You mean Them?’

She nodded. Well she did have truck with Them. We were just gambling that They weren’t as bad as we thought They were. Even though that flew in the face of everything I knew about Them.

‘It’s a hacker myth, a son of anti-Messiah who betrays us to Them. Judas to the entire human race. Vicar said the same thing,’ she said.

‘When?’

‘ "And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication." It’s from the Christian Bible, Revelation. I looked it up,’ she said, her voice flat and emotionless. Fucking hacker religious mania. Fucking Vicar.

‘Vicar was always quoting from Revelation. Besides, he was insane.’

‘You know, I don’t think he was,’ she mused. ‘Papa Neon said something similar when you were out of it. He tried to pass it off as a joke but I got the reference.’

‘What the fuck has voodoo got to do with Revelation?’

‘There’s no such thing as voodoo, that was made up for the vizzes. Papa Neon practises a religion called Vodou.’ The word sounded the same to me. ‘Which is west African religious practices influenced by Catholicism.’

‘Really embracing the religious side of hacking, huh?’ I asked.

‘He sees Loa, spirits in the net, and talks with them,’ she continued.

‘And they’ve been talking about you?’

‘Apparently.’ How could I tell her that this was all bullshit? That it was just one story feeding another. We weren’t much beyond burning witches. How much pressure could we bring to bear on this one teenaged girl?

‘And Pagan thinks you’re this…?’ I didn’t want to use the word.

‘Whore? Everyone wants to call me a whore.’ As if she didn’t have enough to deal with at the moment. ‘He hasn’t said as much but I can see it in his eyes.’ Then she looked a little embarrassed. ‘Besides, I know he’s been researching it in the net.’ That was odd.

‘And he doesn’t know you know?’ I asked.

‘Nope.’ That meant that she had outwitted an experienced hacker like Pagan. Spied on him and hadn’t been caught. No wonder he was frightened. No wonder we all were.

‘Morag, do you think Ambassador has changed you?’ I asked more forcefully than I’d meant to. She looked up into my lenses.

‘Of course it has, how could it not? And the cyberware in my head’s changed me, and you’ve changed me, and Pagan’s changed me. Ambassador doesn’t control me, he’s so gentle. I don’t think I could explain what it’s like talking to him.’ This was beginning to sound worrying.

‘Ambassador’s in the cube, yeah?’ I asked, trying to keep the mounting concern out of my voice.

‘I think there’s a ghost of him in my neural ware.’ My eyes widened. ‘Relax,’ she said, seeing my response. ‘Its scary, a bit, but all he does is help me with the things I can do. He doesn’t control the way I feel or how I think.’

‘He?’ I asked. She shrugged.

‘Just started thinking of him like that.’ I wasn’t sure how I was feeling about this. I was pretty worried and also jealous of the incredibly intimate relationship she had with this male entity.

‘So you want to have me thingied?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘That thing where they drive demons out.’

‘Exorcised?’ I’d seen it done in the schemes and the Rigs. Usually some wannabe hacker, who’d gotten in over their head when they’d had their first vision and brought something back in their cheap neural ware. Sometimes their religious revelations were just too much for them to handle.

‘Yeah, I really do,’ I said honestly.

‘Why?’ she asked as she took the whisky bottle back from me and took a swig from it. I couldn’t help but think of that as a dumb question.

‘What do you mean why? You have an alien living in your head,’ I said, sounding more reasonable than I felt.

‘So? You didn’t have time to get to know me before, so maybe me is me and Ambassador.’ This was making my head hurt. ‘I’m hoping that’s the Morag you want. Unless you’re like every other fucker, and you don’t know me, and you’ve just made this image of me in the shape of what you want in your head.’ She was looking at me accusingly.

‘Fucked if I know, darling,’ I said laughing. ‘As far as I know it’s you I want.’

‘Well that me comes with an alien in my head, so judge me like you would anyone else you meet. Decide whether you trust me or not,’ she said, and I realised I did. Despite the fact that I probably didn’t trust anyone else other than maybe Mudge. ‘You realise you’re probably the first man I’ve ever actually wanted to have sex with?’ she said. I had to laugh. ‘Don’t laugh at me, you bastard.’ She slapped me on my bandaged wound. My scream caused a lot of the assembled cyberbillys to look our way. Morag was giggling.

‘You shouldn’t say things like that to men,’ I said through gritted teeth as the pain subsided.

‘Why not?’

‘Makes us even more full of ourselves.’

‘I want to be honest,’ she said. ‘Because I need you to know that and bear it in mind.’

‘Half my skin’s falling off,’ I said.

‘Somebody had just set your head on fire the first time I met you; besides, your skin’s not that pretty anyway. Just put it down to me being less shallow than you are.’ And then she kissed me. ‘We need to go somewhere,’ she told me.

I was searching through the boot of our car for the bivouac and the ultrasound rat deterrent. Isn’t romance in the wasteland grand? I found what I was looking for and closed the boot. Mudge was stood there.

‘Pagan okay?’ I asked.

Mudge nodded. ‘We’re getting drunk, taking the night off. You?’

‘Same. We need some privacy.’ Mudge smiled.

‘What, you don’t want Rannu to come and watch you? Hell, Buck and Gibby would probably join in if you ask them nicely enough.’

‘Well, I’m never going to have another erection,’ I said.

‘Probably sterile from the radiation as well,’ Mudge said grinning. Then it hit me: what if I wasn’t capable? Mudge must’ve read the expression on my face because he started laughing.

‘You utter bastard.’

‘Funny thing is you probably would’ve been fine if I hadn’t put the idea in your head,’ he said, laughing more.

‘I will be fine,’ I insisted, but this just made him laugh harder. I turned to walk off.

‘Hey, Jake.’ He knew how much I hated that name.

‘What?’ I said, turning on him, but he was serious now.

‘You sure about this, man? She’s very young.’ I thought for a while. Maybe I was being selfish, but I would be dead soon anyway – that was assuming we didn’t get killed by Rolleston or anyone else. I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t. I guessed my motives were about as pure as you could hope for in the situation. Not that pure, but I didn’t think I was taking advantage.

‘Yeah,’ I said. Mudge nodded. I turned to head back to the fire and Morag.

‘Jake?’ I stopped and took a deep breath before turning back.

‘Mudge, you’re preventing me from getting to a beautiful young woman who wants to have sex with me.’

‘Despite the fact you’re half man half tarmac at the moment?’

‘I can shoot you. Besides, you should be down on your knees thanking God for people who’ll have sex with ugly men,’ I said. He grinned, then his face hardened again.

‘When we’re done with all this, we’re going to come back here, to Crawling Town, take care of unfinished business, yeah?’ I could’ve told him that he didn’t have to but it would’ve been a platitude and it would’ve pissed him off.

‘Yeah,’ I told him.

It was on the second floor of one of the terraced flats near a big hole in the floor. It wasn’t the most romantic place ever. We were after all in the middle of a polluted wasteland. I put down a groundsheet and set up the bivouac. Morag switched on a lamp – she didn’t have my low-light vision after all – and unrolled two of the sleeping bags and connected them together.

‘Do you want to know me?’ she asked as she pulled something out of her bag. I took a closer look. It was a highly illegal biofeedback device, basically a box with eight wires extending from it, each wire ending in a plug. They were used either to enhance sex or as a torture device. The box was effectively a small sense machine. Each of us would feel what the other one did. It was about the most intimate thing I could imagine. I could fight in a hundred different firefights but it took a teenaged girl to really frighten me.

‘Where’d you get that?’ I asked.

‘New York.’ That figured. I swallowed and then nodded.

It would be a waste of time trying to describe what it was like to be surrounded by her and then feel what she felt, to feel every touch and its reflection echoing. We remained joined after, just holding each other. It was the release I’d sought but never received from the booths, the loss of self but without the dislocation. It felt like becoming more than just me.

It was only after that it occurred to me that I had given Ambassador access to me. It was only in the morning that my mind had to sabotage this. I guess I just couldn’t accept something so good happening to me.