Veteran

25

Casually dressed and heavily armed, I had more drugs in me than in a Carrion’s dispensary; just enough to keep me upright, make the pain tolerable and stop the nausea from overwhelming me. I leant against the transport cockpit’s door frame. Gibby’s hands moved across the keyboard, playing something almost bluesy, Buck accompanying him softly on the guitar.

Through the window I could see our lights play over the reinforced concrete of the Spoke as Gibby used the enormous structure to guide his ascent. Below us we could see the Mountain Princess, docked close to several similarly sized ore transports, becoming smaller and smaller.

Morag came and stood by me. Pagan was in the back taking care of Atlantis air traffic control. He and Morag had spent the last six hours setting God’s parameters and getting the program ready to run. The rest of us had spent it sleeping and prepping kit in preparation for Mudge’s half-arsed plan. I’d thrown up some blood as well. I wasn’t sure how real any of this was at the moment – me dying, God, any of it. I think I was just functioning on nerves, a cocktail of drugs and good whisky. The good whisky was almost finished.

Morag was looking out. Light shone through windows in the Spoke and from its aircraft hazard lights, and searchlight beams stabbed high into the night sky. We passed the landing decks growing out from the tower like fungus. We passed balconies of rich revellers who waved at us, unaware that if even half of what Pagan and Morag had said was true then their world was going to be changed tonight. We manoeuvred past other transports, many of them much larger than ours. We passed copters, aircars and various other aircraft, though we kept well clear of shuttle air paths. We rose past factory levels, shopping levels, garishly lit entertainment levels and accommodation levels. We passed huge viz screens mostly showing adverts for things that nobody but Balor could have afforded, and if he wanted he would’ve stolen them anyway. On one of the screens there was footage from the war but you couldn’t see the faces of the soldiers. That was good. I didn’t want to see the suffering faces of people I could be about to betray. Morag took it all in with a near-fixed expression of wonder on her face. I split my time between looking out the window at the tower of light and looking at her.

The Spoke was suddenly obscured by cloud. I heard the engines of the transport change tone as Gibby and Buck pushed it back further from the Spoke until the aircraft hazard lights were just a glow in the distance. I knew the transport’s sensors and their vehicle interface software would have created a three-dimensional topographical map of the Spoke which they were using to pilot. I heard a sigh from Morag. She turned to head back into the cargo bay.

‘Wait,’ I said. She stopped, turned, and I nodded out the window. When we rose out of the clouds, shaking off the last wispy tendrils of water vapour, Atlantis was a thin neon tower against the deep-blue backdrop of the night sky. It was reaching up as far as the eye could see towards space. Morag craned her neck to look up through the clear composite bubble of the cockpit. I was glad I saw this before I died. I was glad Morag saw this before she died. I wondered about the people who could afford to live here. Did they still appreciate this or was it all just commonplace to them? I hope they still appreciated it. It didn’t bode well for their souls if they didn’t feel awe at this feat of engineering and beauty.

There was less traffic up here, though more of it was security. These were the executive levels – various corporate enclaves, office and living spaces in the same areas. Higher up were the lift docks and more landing areas for the heavy commercial traffic. I heard the turbines whine again and Gibby and Buck’s music change as the transport pushed back even further from the Spoke. Looking up I felt I was looking at the edge of space. Using my optics I could just about see where the building ended and there was only the cable structure leading to orbit, High Atlantis and the asteroid tether.

‘See it?’ Gibby asked Morag, and pointed upwards. She looked up. I couldn’t make out what he was talking about.

‘No,’ she said, her face screwing up in concentration. Buck’s tune changed, as did the display overlaid on the cockpit windscreen. It showed the same part of the Spoke but now much magnified. I could see the huge multi-storeyed elevator sliding down the cable at speed. It was lit up like a Christmas tree. I’d seen Christmas trees on vizzes.

‘Looks like one of the luxury ones,’ Buck said. ‘High-velocity, five-star hotel.’ Morag was just staring at it. I realised I was grinning. We watched as it sank into the Spoke’s superstructure; even then we could see it moving within the massive building. I was feeling less cynical about this. We, humans, I meant, could build this, and John Coltrane could record A Love Supreme, and the Sixteen Men of Tain still made Glenmorangie. Those three things were proof that we deserved more than this constant, grinding war. I think that was when I started to hope a bit. So I was less than pleased when I turned round to see Mudge wearing only cowboy boots, boxer shorts and a string vest. He had a full bottle of vodka in one hand and his AK in the other. A joint hung out the side of his mouth. I could see both his precision-engineered, high-speed prosthetic legs.

‘What’ve you come as?’ I asked.

‘Dude, this is what the revolution looks like,’ he said, grinning.

I maybe should’ve seen something like this coming. ‘You don’t think you’re going to lack credibility?’ I asked, more politely than I felt.

‘I need to feel comfortable, man,’ he said.

I looked him up and down. ‘And you feel comfortable like that?’

‘I know you like what you see,’ he said and winked at me. Morag burst out laughing.

‘You’re just trying to piss off Pagan, aren’t you?’ I said. Gregor seemed to rise up behind him. I was becoming more use to his skewed physiology. He was wearing a long coat but it didn’t hang right. He had an ammo drum strapped to his back and was carrying a Retributor, apparently with ease.

‘You look like a twat,’ Gregor said to Mudge. Mudge looked over his shoulder, an eyebrow raised.

‘The weird-looking alien’s right,’ I agreed. ‘You realise if this is as big a deal as Pagan’s making out you will be recorded for posterity looking like that.’ Morag was still grinning.

‘Trust me. When I’ve finished everyone will be dressing like this,’ he said.

‘I won’t!’ Morag burst out.

‘You’d look good in a string vest,’ I suggested.

‘Your mum’ll see you dressed like that,’ Gregor pointed out.

‘Mum’ll love it, she’ll be proud,’ Mudge said.

‘We’re down in thirty seconds,’ Gibby warned.

We were going to go in there, take over the broadcast node, download God and start broadcasting. It wouldn’t take them long to take us down, but by then the damage would be done. I looked around at us all as the transport came into dock at some generic broadcast node. We were going to die doing something incredibly stupid. That appealed to me – my life had been incredibly stupid. I would rather have been a musician. Why couldn’t I get A Love Supreme out of my head? This would be a good enough way to die. It was a shame Morag had to go, a shame that she didn’t get a chance to experience more. I found myself grinning. Mudge was grinning as well.

‘You realise if this works everyone has the potential to know every little secret out there? We could turn the world into a huge riot. Scores will be getting settled left, right and centre. This entire system could burn,’ I said.

‘Something has to change,’ Mudge said seriously.

‘Is this how?’ I asked.

‘How long should we keep second-guessing ourselves?’ he asked. I felt the transport get blown sideways as Gibby fought the high cross-winds whipping round the Spoke. Finally the transport lurched and landed with a thump. I heard a clang as a walkway mated with the doorway of the transport.

‘So we’re not taking this seriously then?’ Pagan asked, staring at Mudge, his face a mask of barely controlled fury. Gregor loomed over the hacker.

‘You die your way, let him die his,’ he said. I saw Mudge glance at the hybrid. Mudge’s expression was unreadable.

I noticed there were tears in Morag’s eyes. As Gregor and Mudge moved by me to the door I leant in close to her.

‘You okay?’ I asked her stupidly.

She smiled. ‘Scared. So this is it?’

I didn’t know what to say to her. How could I tell her that this might be best, that this was much better than the way her life would’ve turned out? Instead I decided to behave like a male, completely selfishly. I leant in and kissed her. At first she tensed. Not only was she still angry at me for being a prick, and rightly so, but I must’ve looked awful covered in angry red bleeding sores with a sickly looking, greyish skin tone. I was kind of surprised she didn’t throw up. Then she reciprocated, one hand reaching up for me, the other pushed against my chest over my modified heart. It seemed to last a long time and was over very quickly. Surprisingly the others were good enough to remain quiet.

‘I just didn’t want to go not having-’ I began. She held a finger over my lips, silencing me.

Gibby and Buck pushed past me out of the cockpit. Gibby had a bullpup Kalashnikov slung over his back and was carrying a long, thin armoured case. He had unconnected wires hanging out of his plugs. Buck was carrying a semi-automatic/pump-action shotgun in one hand and a case not dissimilar to Gibby’s in the other.

Pagan glanced up at the pair of them from the transport’s lock mechanism. He was trying to override the media node’s security. ‘Why are you bringing your instruments?’

‘They’re the band, man,’ Mudge said. ‘This is show business.’

Pagan looked like he was about to argue but instead turned back to the dock.

‘This is just a huge ego trip for you, isn’t it?’ I asked Mudge.

‘I’m shitting myself,’ he said, still grinning, took another swig from his vodka and lit his spliff. The door to the node opened and suddenly it was all business.

Rannu, Balor and Gregor were first through, weapons at the ready, sweeping left and right, checking corners as they entered. I heard the first scream of surprise. Gibby and Buck followed. They dropped their instrument cases to the side of the node’s entrance, their weapons came up and they were all pro. Morag and Pagan followed, Morag carrying the cube. Mudge lifted his AK-47 to port and the pair of us sauntered through. Despite the drugs I was finding my enthusiasm for paramilitary nonsense fading.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from a broadcast studio, maybe lavish sets or banks of high-tech equipment, people everywhere, that sort of thing. I was pretty disappointed. I don’t know what this node was called but they specialised in ‘reality’ soap opera porn. It was a lot more cost-effective to use computer-generated sets and actors, but apparently some people claimed they could tell the difference, and for those who could afford to subscribe to real flesh there were set-ups like this. That didn’t stop them from computer-generating things like costumes and sets, and I would guess digitally enhancing some of the actors’ attributes.

Basically it was a plain white set with various representational bits of furniture that the actors could react to and use, detail to be added in post-production. There were three actors on the set, two men and a woman, all of them generically attractive in a really dull way. All had white, skintight overalls that covered everything but their faces so their costumes could be added at a later date. There was one other person on the set. She had camera eyes like Mudge’s and a transmitter in one of her sockets, presumably linking her to a media board. Around the set several miniature camera systems floated silently, catching the actors from every conceivable angle. They were similar to the ones Mudge had used to shoot the fight I’d had with Rannu in New York, but they were much smaller and more sophisticated.

A catwalk surrounded the studio area, and directly opposite us was a glass booth with two men in it, one of whom was unmistakeably some kind of security guard. Beyond I could see a passage leading, presumably, to reception and to the exit out onto this level of the Spoke. I headed for that, strolling calmly, lighting a cigarette. Balor was terrifying the actors by screaming at them to lie on the floor.

‘Calm down,’ I told him. ‘Just sit over there and be quiet,’ I ordered the actors, pointing at a featureless, modular white sofa. They nodded, one of the men blinking back tears.

Rannu had his Metal Storm gauss carbine out in front of him, the butt tight in against his shoulder as he made his way smoothly up the metal stairs to the catwalk. I headed into the passageway leading to the reception and the entrance of the node. The walls of the corridor were painted turquoise and decorated with some suitably hip logo that looked like a high-tech, fast-moving chicken to me. I guessed it was supposed to be cooler than that, or maybe chickens were in. Behind me I could hear Morag shouting at someone to put their gun down.

‘Remember we’re not going to kill anyone,’ I said over the tac net. I received something akin to white noise back from Balor. I strolled round the corner into the reception area, my shotgun still slung across my back, and walked into a badly controlled burst of fire from a PD W. I staggered a little, my armoured coat and subcutaneous armour stopping the small-calibre rounds.

‘Ow, fuck!’ I shouted intelligently and then staggered back around the corner, all pissed off, but not before I caught a glimpse of what I assumed was a rather militant receptionist. He was crouching for cover behind a large and groovy-looking desk. I heard something behind me and glanced round to see the misshapen, off-centre figure of Gregor lope over to my position, his Retributor at the ready.

‘I think the railgun may be overkill here,’ I told him. ‘Hey!’ I said, shouting to the receptionist. ‘We don’t want to hurt you. Just leave, okay?’

‘How do I know you won’t shoot me if I try to leave?’ he demanded.

‘We haven’t shot you yet!’ I pointed out. ‘We do have desk-piercing rounds in our weapons!’ Gregor laughed. There was another burst of gunfire.

‘You’re next to the fucking door; just run away!’ I shouted, and was answered with another burst of gunfire. What was this guy’s problem? Gregor made to move round me, railgun at the ready.

‘Don’t kill him,’ I hissed at Gregor. He went round the corner and there was another burst of gunfire. Judging by the ricochets some of it hit Gregor. I think he had plates beneath his skin that hardened when they were hit with sufficient kinetic force. It was disconcerting to watch. Gregor returned.

‘Did you miss being shot?’ I asked. Gregor just looked at me in a manner I guessed was supposed to be rueful. It was difficult to tell with his warped facial features.

‘You!’ I shouted to the armed receptionist. ‘What the fuck are you doing? He’s obviously a big weird-looking thing with a railgun and you shot him? What were you thinking? Put the gun down now or you’ll get shot so much you’ll cease to exist!’ Gregor gave me a funny look. ‘What? Civilians respond to threats like that.’

There was no answer but eventually I heard the sound of running footsteps.

‘See? Look round the corner. Maybe you’ll get shot again,’ I suggested. Gregor pushed me round the corner. Despite all the metal and plastic I was carrying internally, his enormous strength moved me with little effort.

‘Hey! That’s not funny, man.’ But the receptionist had gone. In front of the desk was a large glass wall that looked out onto a wide plaza lined with various trendy-looking offices. There were a few suits looking our way. Behind me from the main studio I could hear more shouting.

‘Watch the door,’ I told Gregor. He nodded. I wandered back into the main studio area. I found Balor had the actors, the camera-eyed woman, two security guards and a young guy I assumed had been working the media deck up in the gallery all lying face down on the floor. He was covering them with his Spectre/grenade launcher combo. I sighed.

‘I thought I said they could sit down?’ I said to him.

‘What are we going to do with them? We could strap them to possible breach points,’ he said.

I looked up at the demonic features of the huge amphibian cyborg. ‘We could,’ I mused. ‘Or we could let them go because they’ll be a noisy pain in the arse and it’s not what we do.’

Balor looked at me in disgust. ‘They won’t make any noise if we cut their tongues out,’ he said. At this, several of them started screaming and crying. I just looked at Balor.

I leant down to the actress, who seemed to be holding it together best. She looked vaguely familiar to me, but whether that was because I’d seen her on the viz or she’d surgically altered herself to look like the flavour of the month I didn’t know.

‘We’re going to let you go,’ I said as reassuringly as I could. I guessed as I was covered in angry bleeding sores and looked like a walking corpse it probably wasn’t all that reassuring. She nodded nonetheless. ‘Now security, the police and possibly the military are going to talk to you, okay?’ I said. She nodded again. ‘I want you to tell them that everyone in here is ex-special forces and that we are ready for a breach, but if they leave us be we’ll turn ourselves over once we’re finished, okay?’ I said. She nodded.

‘Okay. All of you, up and out,’ I told them. A few of them had to be coaxed but eventually they all left. They stared at Gregor as they moved past him.

In the studio Morag and Pagan were both tranced into the net. I had net feed but hadn’t brought the window up yet. Gibby and Buck were setting up their instruments, Buck his guitar, Gibby his keyboard, but they were also plugging themselves into other bits and pieces. They would have a drum machine, bass machine, mixing deck and a transmitter to link to the media deck, I guessed. Mudge had nicked the camera-eyed woman’s remote media deck connection and was concentrating. Rannu appeared through a door near the gallery on the catwalk above.

‘What have we got?’ I asked.

‘What you see and two other areas. One is rec and changing, the other is admin, storage and what looks like a design room – all clear,’ Rannu answered. I thought he sounded almost bored.

‘Make the other areas safe,’ I told Rannu. The ex-Ghurkha nodded. They were never going to be safe but at least we could prepare as much as possible for the inevitable breach. I headed back to the reception area.

I found Gregor looking amused and peering out the window. He was sat on the reception desk.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘A couple of corporate rent-a-cops just came round the corner, took one look at me and scrambled on all fours back out of view,’ he said.

‘You’re getting high on power, man,’ I said, smiling, and triggered the security door, which began sliding down. ‘You send out the crawlers?’ I asked. Gregor nodded and texted me the link to the small robot cameras he’d set loose outside the facility. It looked like one of them was shooting from inside a landscaped part of the mall. Around the corner from the node facility I could see the two cowering rent-a-cops. They had guns in their hands and looked like they were sub-vocalising frantically. I laughed; maybe the cops thought They had invaded. Gregor began putting motion and sound detectors up against the door and exterior walls while I redirected the external and interior security camera feeds to my internal visual display and ensured they were disconnected from the net.

A blinking icon on the reception console told me that someone was trying to contact the node. I opened the link. The face that appeared on the screen was overweight, nervous, sweating heavily and so obviously an overpaid hostage negotiation consultant it was difficult to look at him. He’d probably never had to handle a situation this serious before. He opened his mouth to talk.

‘I’ll only speak to the commander of the HRT or SWAT team you’re sending in here. If I haven’t heard from them in five minutes I’ll kill a hostage,’ I lied and then killed the link. Gregor looked over at me. I shrugged. ‘He looked like an arsehole.’ From the external cameras and the concealed crawlers I could see the local security establishing a perimeter.

‘You got it here?’ I said, diverting the reception comms to my own.

Gregor nodded.

‘And don’t kill anyone. If we’re not done then we buy enough time for Morag and Pagan to finish, but once they’re in, it’s over,’ I said and turned, heading back to the studio.

‘What about Rolleston?’ he asked. I couldn’t read his warped features. I gave this some thought.

‘Well, there’s an exception to every rule.’ My voice sounded hard even to my own ears.

‘I’m not going to be captured again,’ Gregor said to my back. I stopped. I hadn’t considered this. I was dying so I guess I hadn’t really thought about what was going to happen to the others when they were inevitably handed over to Rolleston and his cronies. That was assuming things hadn’t changed that much by then. I looked over my shoulder at the freakish mess they’d made of my friend. I realised then that he didn’t belong anywhere. Nobody would accept what he was. Maybe Them, if we did manage to make peace, but after the war he would never be able to accept Them. I wondered how much he hated himself.

‘I’ll take care of it,’ I heard myself saying.

Back in the studio I realised that we didn’t have nearly enough guns. Not if Buck and Gibby were going to be fucking around playing music and Mudge was going to be weirdly exercising his ego, but I guessed it didn’t really matter. The absurdity of the situation made me smile.

Rannu appeared on the catwalk above us and gave me the thumbs up. The first floor was as ready for a breach as we were going to get. Already a couple of the motion detectors had gone off. This was presumably a SWAT team drilling through the walls and pushing monofilament cameras and smart AV bugs through.

‘They won’t be able to breach the external Spoke wall but they will try and come through the transport and the docking arm, probably with armour, so we’ve left a few surprises in the transport. Balor, I want you covering the docking arm.’ If they were going to send exo-armour in here after us, and they would, I was sure that Balor could and would want to go toe to toe with it. ‘Rannu, I want you up on the catwalk. Conceal yourself as best you can and make sure you’ve got line of sight on both the doors and the gallery. If necessary you will provide fire support for Balor and me down on the floor,’ I said over the tac net. Rannu nodded. ‘Gregor, I want you pulled back to the studio but looking out covering the reception area. They will definitely breach that security door. It’s the weakest point.’

‘Why don’t I just stay out here?’ Gregor came back.

‘Because you may as well see as much of the fun as we get a chance to have,’ I answered. Moments later I saw Gregor move back into the studio and kneel down by the entrance to the reception area, the massive Retributor at the ready.

I could see a comms icon flashing on my internal visual display. It was the re-routed comms line from the reception desk. I opened it up and routed it over the tac net to Gregor, Rannu and Balor. The comms icon I saw was of a hard-faced black woman. She was dressed in the lightweight hard armour and inertial undersuit common to SWAT and Cyber SWAT units. Her eyes were black polarised lenses, her hair shorn down to stubble. I reckoned she was short and stocky like many special forces operators.

‘I don’t have time for this. You don’t have any hostages so we’re going to come in there and get you out,’ she said in an American accent. I considered asking her where she’d been, but for a job this prestigious I figured her for ex-Delta. She reminded me of Ash.

‘I’m in love,’ Balor muttered.

‘And you are?’ I enquired politely. She seemed to consider this. My feed from one of the crawlers showed her some way back surrounded by a group of similarly armoured figures. They had an armoured ram tank specially designed for use in the Spoke. Behind that I could see African-made, Praetorian powered-armour suits. I could also see Praetorians and a number of police gunships hovering around in the air outside the node.

‘Watch Commander Cat Sommerjay,’ she said. ‘Now stop fucking around, Sergeant Douglas. If you don’t come out now then all you’ll get is dead, you know that.’ So she knew who I was.

‘Getting a lot of pressure to breach?’ I asked. ‘People want you to come in before you’re ready?’ She hesitated. That was good, that meant she cared about her people.

‘Sergeant-’ she began.

‘Just call me Jakob,’ I said.

‘You smooth bastard,’ Gregor said. I glared at him. I seemed to have pissed off Cat – as I found myself thinking of her.

‘Look, arsehole,’ she snarled. ‘I’m not the fucking negotiator. You want to make friends, you shouldn’t have hung up on him. Either you come out or we come in, your choice.’

‘I’m definitely in love,’ Balor confirmed. ‘Let’s surrender.’

‘Look, Cat,’ I said. ‘We haven’t killed anyone, we’re contained and we will only fight to protect ourselves. We need a little time and then I promise you we’ll surrender,’ I said, trying not to think about my promise to Gregor. Cat opened her mouth to reply but stopped, looking irritable.

‘Wait a second,’ she said, and her comms icon froze on hold.

‘What was that?’ Balor asked.

‘At a guess, a priority comms override from the Cabal,’ Gregor said.

‘They want her to breach,’ I said, glancing over at Pagan and Morag and wishing they would hurry up.

‘Good. I want to meet this woman,’ Balor said.

‘Won’t your shark be jealous?’ I asked.

‘Magantu is very understanding,’ Balor said seriously.

‘And would have trouble swimming this high,’ Gregor said. We really weren’t taking our imminent deaths seriously enough.

‘The good news is she doesn’t strike me as the sort of person Rolleston can push around,’ I said as Cat’s icon came back to life. She didn’t look happy.

‘You need to come out now,’ she said.

‘The people who’re pushing you to breach are going to get a lot of your people killed before you get us. You know that and there’s no need for it,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I know that, but I’ve been given some very compelling reasons to come in and get you,’ she said. As a commander, and she struck me as an ex-NCO not an officer, I could tell she didn’t want to come in here. I wondered what she’d been told. Had she been told that we had an alien virus and an alien? Had she been told that we were in league with Them? ‘Is it true that Balor is in there with you?’ she asked.

I saw Morag and then Pagan come out of their trances, blinking and looking around. Buck and Gibby began to play. It was a slow and faintly sinister piece.

‘Yeah,’ I told her. ‘He’s our hostage.’ My comms icon presumably transmitted the smile on my face. Well, I was smiling until I saw Balor glaring at me.

‘Look, you know they’ll never let you broadcast, yeah?’ she said. I looked over at Morag, who gave me the thumbs up.

‘Too late,’ I told Cat. ‘You’ll want to see this.’

I switched on my net feed.