War in Heaven

12

Most of them may have been military but it looked less like a resistance base and more like a refugee camp. Gaunt, hungry, harried, haunted-looking men and women looked at the FAVs with suspicion.

We’d managed to get Pagan’s vehicle running and I drove him. He’d come to and told me that they’d fired the missile figuring they were dead anyway. Pagan had been badly kicked about but was otherwise okay. Mudge was much the same. Cat’s FAV towed ours. Morag was reasonably sure that if she could find the right parts, despite the kicking it had taken, she could get it running. I was beginning to think FAVs were worth their exorbitant price tag.

We told ourselves we’d gone with the Kiwi voluntarily, after the inevitable argument about whether or not it was a trap or just a bad idea. When we drove into the network of caverns we were well covered. Somehow, even when there’s not enough food to eat, there are always enough guns. In this case there were also mechs. There were four of the fighting machines including the Landsknecht that had escorted us in. There was another Landsknecht, a Steel Mantis, a light fast scout mech and, most impressive, a Bismarck-class heavy mech.

The Bismarck was basically a heavily armed weapons platform slung between four heavy-duty, insect-like legs. With a three-hundred-millimetre mass driver and two heavy missile batteries as well as various point-defence and anti-personnel weapons, its firepower was something to be respected. But it would be nearly useless in this kind of war. They had all the toys, but this was a hard planet to forage for food on. These people looked like they were starving. Compared to them, I just felt healthy and well fed.

We climbed out of the FAVs into a circle of gun barrels. I tried my best don’t-fuck-with-us look, but as the adrenalin wore off the high G settled on me like a dead weight around my shoulders, pressing down on a sore spine. I spat. My throat felt red raw and the spittle had a pink look to it.

‘So, are we hooking up with the local resistance or being robbed?’ Cat muttered under her breath.

‘Who’s in command?’ Pagan asked.

Nobody said anything. Most of the people around us were Maoris and had the squat powerful build of people born to high gravity. Except their bodies had started to waste. Many of them had tattoos that looked like they’d crawled onto their faces. The Landsknecht mech that had brought us in still towered over us.

‘I think we should give these people food,’ Morag said.

Pagan hissed at her to be quiet. Cat and Merle looked less than pleased with her suggestion.

Generator-run portable lights and free-standing lamps lit the cavern network. There weren’t enough of either to completely light the place and much of it remained in darkness. There were laser-cut niches in the rock that seemed to be bunk spaces. I’d find out later that they were called miner coffins and in the early colonisation period were where dead miners were left in state until they could be disposed off. There were a lot of them.

The circle of guns broke as four people walked through the crowd towards us. The woman looked like she’d had a hard life. She probably wasn’t much older than me but she looked worn. She was muscle and hard edges in inertial armour with a sleeveless leather jacket over the top. When she turned to say something to one of the others I saw that the back of the jacket bore a stylised demon head with bulging eyes and a protruding tongue — gang colours of some kind. Half of her face and the visible skin on her arms were tattooed with swirling patterns that looked like they were trying to engulf her dark but still somehow sallow skin.

Next to her was the biggest hacker I’d ever seen. I could tell he was a hacker because of the mishmash of military and black-market tech that seemed to grow out of half his head. Despite his squat muscular bulk and the heavy G, he moved with a surprisingly easy, almost predatory grace. Like the others you could see where skin had tightened over food-starved flesh. His face and most of the flesh I could see was tattooed. It made him look somehow otherworldly. He wore a sleeveless leather jacket as well. All four of them did.

The other guy made me think of all the fun we’d had in Freetown Camp 12 with the Russians. While nowhere near as heavily modified as the Vucari, someone had given a canine look to his face. He had a protruding power-assisted jaw of surgical-steel teeth and a dog-like nose. His fingers ended in distinctly claw-like steel nails. He looked more dog than wolf but not like one of the friendly breeds. Tattoos ran up his cheek through long sideburns and bridged his forehead.

‘No,’ Mudge said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t like dog things.’

He may have been verbalising how we all felt after our run-in with the Vucari. It still wasn’t very diplomatic. The dog guy punched Mudge very hard. Mudge hit the ground.

‘That’s my other dog impression!’ the guy shouted at Mudge, who was trying to get to his feet. Cat grabbed the guy and did something complicated with his arms and neck, immobilising him. There was a lot of shifting about in the assembled circle of guns. Serious violence was imminent.

The other woman, little more than a girl, was the slenderest person there. I didn’t understand why the gravity hadn’t snapped her like a twig. She was pale, paler than the rest, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t a Maori despite the tattooed lips and chin. She had long, straight dark hair and couldn’t have been much older than Morag. Also, she wasn’t right. There was something not there about her, as if she was getting a different signal to the rest of us.

The hard-faced woman and the big hacker just stopped and gave us the eye. The pale girl walked straight up and started to inspect us.

‘Let him go,’ the hard-faced woman said to Cat.

Cat ignored her. Mudge was spitting out blood. Dog guy was struggling to get free; Cat was having none of it.

I turned to look at him. ‘Touch him again and I’ll hurt you, okay?’

The guy was furious at his helplessness. He just spat at me. I nodded to Cat, who cut him loose. That was good. We were acting the part of a together, properly functioning unit, even if we were really a mess. Dog guy turned to glare at Cat but said nothing.

‘That’s our Cat,’ I said, trying to break the tension. It fell flat.

The odd girl was next to me now, examining me. I turned to look at her.

‘You SF?’ the hard-faced woman asked. We didn’t answer.

‘They’re SF,’ the big guy said.

‘Well thank fuck. We’re saved,’ dog guy growled.

‘They transmitting?’ the hard-faced woman asked.

‘Not that I can tell. They seem to be running comms dark,’ the big guy answered.

‘Check their vehicles anyway.’

The hacker moved towards the FAVs.

I moved to intercept. ‘Hold on,’ I said, holding up my hand.

‘You’re transmitting, we’re fucked. We’ll have to run again and we always lose people when we run,’ the woman said.

‘We’re running comms dark,’ Pagan said. ‘We’re hiding from the same thing you are.’

The big guy stopped but glanced back at the woman. The pale girl was examining Morag now. Morag was smiling uncomfortably at her.

Mudge climbed to his feet, spitting blood. ‘Ow!’ he announced and lit up a spliff. There seemed to be no visible enmity towards the dog guy. Maybe after being blown up he didn’t care.

‘Couple of things you need to get used to. We are going to check your vehicles and we will be taking your food. You’ll get your fair share if we decide not to kill you and let you stay,’ the woman told me. ‘Big Henry, what’s the score?’

‘They were fighting the good fight when I found them,’ came the amplified reply from the mech.

‘You fighting the Freedom Squadrons?’ the big hacker asked.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Freedom Squadrons? We call them the Black Squadrons,’ I said.

‘Freedom Squadrons is what they call themselves. We mostly call them wankers,’ dog guy growled.

‘She’s really fucking with my calm!’ Mudge said, pointing at the pale girl, whose face was inches away from his as she studied him. Maybe he’d had enough of being kicked around after all.

‘Leave her be,’ the big hacker said. There was a dangerous edge to his voice that didn’t strike me as an affectation. I was pretty sure this guy knew how to look after himself.

‘You guys British?’ the woman asked. I nodded. ‘You in-country when this happened?’ I shook my head. ‘You point on an invasion?’ I shook my head. ‘Didn’t think so. Your food?’

‘Cat, Merle, give them half our ration packs.’

Merle’s head whipped round to look at me. He wanted to say something but was more disciplined. Mudge wasn’t.

‘Half our…’ Somehow he had the presence of mind to shut up when I glared at him. May as well try and keep up the pretence of professionalism.

‘Anyone tries to take more, shoot them,’ I continued.

The hard-faced woman gave this some thought.

‘Just so you know, when we need the other half we’ll take it, and if you don’t like it then we’ve got a long and proud history of cannibalism.’

There was laughter. From us as well. They just didn’t seem that scary after the Vucari.

‘Well, let’s hope we’re friends by then,’ I said. ‘You’re not checking the vehicles. We’re not transmitting. You can work that out yourselves. You’ll just have to trust us. We’ll pay for that trust in food.’

‘We can take-’ dog guy started, but the woman held up her hand and he was quiet.

‘Look, mate, I’m sorry about what he said, but we’ve had a bad time with some people that looked like you recently. We may be the only friends you’ve got down here,’ I said. It was a guess, but they looked in a bad way.

‘And we’re the only friends you’ve got, right?’ the big hacker asked. He had a point.

‘Assuming we don’t eat you,’ the woman said.

The place was called Utu Pa. A pa was some sort of Maori fortification and utu meant something between revenge and reciprocity. I’d done the introductions. They just gave us their call signs. I suspect the call signs had been their nicknames when they’d run as a gang together and were probably more meaningful to them than their real names. The hard-faced woman was Mother. She had been the senior NCO and now appeared to command the entire pa. The big hacker was called Tailgunner and with Mother drove the Bismarck-class mech. Dog guy was called Dog Face. That would be easy to remember. Some piece of shit had had him modified when he was still a kid to act as a human ratter. Apparently they had rats here on Lalande, which sort of impressed me. The pale girl went by the name of Strange. Again I didn’t think I was going to have a problem remembering that.

Big Henry, our saviour, had of course turned out to be very short. It was a typical squaddie naming convention. Not much bigger than a Twist, he moved with a particular waddling gate but was very powerfully built. A battered and ancient-looking bowler hat perched precariously on his mass of thick braided hair, which was pulled into a ponytail. His beard was braided as well and he had tattoos on what little hair-free skin we could see. He’d seemed the least hostile of the lot, but then he’d seen us fighting the bad guys.

After our initial chat Mudge had pulled me aside.

‘Half our fucking food!’ he demanded.

‘There’s more back at the cache, and Merle knows where there are more caches.’

‘Which could be compromised.’ Cat and Merle were acting as armed supervision as Mother’s people removed half our ration packs from the FAVs.

‘What do you want me to say, Mudge? Look at them. They’re fucking starving and we’re very low on friends here. Besides, I served with some Maori guys on loan from the Kiwi SAS. They were hard bastards.’

Mudge grinned. ‘Everyone seems hard to you.’

They were Queen Alexandra’s Mounted Rifles, or a deserter element of them, an armoured cavalry unit. Mother and Tailgunner seemed to run things, backed by Dog Face and Big Henry. Strange was just local colour, I think. The infantry, tank and artillery crews they had with them, nearly all Maoris as well, called the five of them the Ngati Apakura. It meant the Tribe of the Woman Who Urged Revenge. The Bismarck-class mech was also called Apakura. They called themselves whanau. As far as I could tell it meant family.

The five were close, very tight. They’d grown up on the streets together with no family but each other. They’d run as a gang because they’d had to. It was the street politics of victimise or be a victim. The street ate children who couldn’t find a way to protect themselves. They’d formed their gang, their tribe, and still wore their colours as patches on the back of their cut-off, armoured leather jackets.

Mudge had managed to find all this out while talking to Big Henry and some of the others in the camp who he hadn’t pissed off yet. I suspected he was relying on shared narcotics rather than charisma to make friends.

They’d learned to drive mechs in the mines. They’d piloted stripped-down mining versions — all the best parts had gone to the front to be used on fighting mechs — but the resources had to keep flowing. Big Henry had told Mudge that they’d lost as many people to mine accidents before they got drafted as they had in the war. The five were all that was left of their family. Christ knows how they’d managed to stay in the same platoon together all this time.

The Black/Freedom Squadrons were claiming to be the Earth government in exile. They’d turned up with Cronin at their head. It seems that despite what God had thought, Lalande and not Sirius had been their first stop. They’d laid a false trail for us. This made sense if what we suspected about the Citadel was correct.

The Freedom Squadrons had put out a story that we’d been a Them fifth column and had pulled off propaganda coups by making the Earth believe the war was over and taking control of the net with a Them virus. There’s even been edited footage of us taking Atlantis played on the vizzes. I felt used.

The Freedom Squadron called Demiurge the Freedom Wave. Sadly, calling something the opposite of what it was seemed to work in propaganda. People listened to names. It was much easier than studying actions. Cronin, the spokesperson for the so-called Earth government in exile, described it as the last defence against the Them computer virus, a sort of global comms net inoculation.

Tailgunner called it the Black Wave. He saw it for what it was and had isolated their systems and fled their pa or firebase after an encounter with what sounded like a Themtech-enhanced operator. I was impressed they’d shot down one of the Black Squadron’s next-generation assault shuttles with a mech.

Some other members of their unit had joined them and they had found other stragglers in the caves. Then people on the run from the Black Squadrons came looking for them. All in all, there were about two hundred of them. Mainly infantry, a few support, three tank crews, two of whom actually had tanks, and a self-propelled artillery crew complete with tracked SP gun. They also had almost enough APCs in various states of repair to move everyone if they had to.

It was a lot of mouths to feed. What they’d discovered early on was that if any of them got captured then they were compromised almost immediately. One of their people had gone missing while scouting for supplies. The next thing they knew their pa had been hit by a mixed force of NZ colonial regulars backed by the Black Squadrons. They’d only got away after a vicious firefight because they collapsed a tunnel after they’d managed a fighting retreat. Since then they’d been hiding in the deep caves. They moved every couple of weeks or if someone went missing, even if the poor fucker had just got lost. I figured that they were still alive because they weren’t important enough for Rolleston to deal with yet.

The whanau knew that Demiurge meant total surveillance in the areas that it controlled. This limited their options and meant that they had very little information about what was going on in the more densely populated areas above their heads. And of course it made getting food very difficult.

They’d managed a few raids for supplies but this wasn’t their kind of war. I didn’t doubt for a second that they were all very good in a stand-up fight, which was what they were trained for, but if the Black Squadrons were going to be fought it would mean using guerrilla tactics. Mechs just aren’t all that useful for that kind of thing.

On the other hand, they had wiped out any Black Squadron types they’d found in the deeper levels. Anyone who came looking for them for reasons other than joining was also killed. There was a problem with this tactic, however, a more concentrated form of what I’d been feeling. Anyone of us would kill Rolleston, Cronin or the Grey Lady as soon as look at them. The same went for any of the Themtech-enhanced arse-lickers here, but most of the soldiers were just normal draftees trying to stay alive. I didn’t like the idea of killing them but it was abstract for me. If some poor bastard was pointing an assault rifle at me it was always going to be him in the him-or-me stakes. The people here would know some of the guys they’d have to shoot. They’d recognised some of the people who’d attacked their pa with the Black Squadrons. The rest of the forces on Lalande and in the colonies would buy Cronin’s story — there was no real reason not to. That meant that they’d think that these guys, and us, were the bad guys. Not just the bad guys but species traitors who’d sold out all of mankind. Come to that, I was a bit worried about what would happen when the whanau saw through our disguise and realised that we were the people who’d released God into the net.

‘How come you just didn’t do as you were told? Make things easy on yourselves?’ I asked.

We were sitting in a circle next to the FAVs trying to make sure nobody nicked the rest of our stuff. Cat was actually on guard but she was still close enough to the conversation to join in if she wanted. Mother, Tailgunner, Dog Face and Big Henry were facing us over a camp stove. We were attempting to eat, but the sulphurous atmosphere made everything taste like farts to me. It didn’t seem to bother Merle. He was wolfing his food down.

Strange was standing just outside the circle we’d formed, in shadow between the pools of light provided by two of the portable lamps. Each of us was taking it in turns to be stared at by the girl. It was disconcerting. This wasn’t someone trying to be odd for the sake of it, or for effect like Mudge; this was someone who was damaged in some way. I noticed that Morag was spending a lot of time looking back at her.

‘We’re not very good at doing what we’re told,’ Dog Face growled. I think he was rueing the mess they found themselves in. I knew how he felt.

‘Why were all your mechs’ comms shut down?’ Pagan asked.

I watched them glance between each other uncomfortably. There was obviously something there that they didn’t want to talk about.

‘We were warned,’ Tailgunner finally said.

‘By who?’ I asked.

They didn’t answer. Close to starving or not, we couldn’t strong-arm these people. Normally I’d have been pissed off — after all we were all in the same shit — but I could see their point of view. This was a huge risk for them. For all they knew, we were the bad guys and the rest of our Freedom Squadron friends were on their way. We’d have to work for their trust.

‘We’re the ones,’ Morag said. Mother, Tailgunner and the others turned to look at her, confused. ‘We put God into the net. She’s not a Them virus; she just tells the truth.’

Merle was shaking his head and looking pissed off. Pagan turned to her but she ignored him. Mudge was grinning. Instead of earning their trust we could just make grandiose gestures, I thought. Morag may have been talking to Mother, Tailgunner, Dog Face and Big Henry but she was looking at Strange.

‘Have you got any vodka?’ I asked Mudge as what Morag had said started to sink in with our hosts.

‘What am I, your own personal off-licence?’ Mudge demanded.

‘I’m not wasting good whisky in this shit-for-atmosphere.’

To give Mudge his credit he went and got a bottle. He’d probably jumped with it and humped it all over hell’s creation.

Tailgunner and Mother were both still thinking it over. Mother didn’t look happy.

‘I thought you looked familiar. Changed your looks before you got here?’ she asked.

Morag nodded. Though that had been a waste of time if we were just going to tell everyone, I thought.

Dog Face was the first to get angry. ‘This is your fucking fault?’ he growled.

‘Yep,’ Mudge said proudly as he opened the bottle, took a swig and passed it to me. I passed it to Mother. She looked at it as if I was offering her a knife point-first but took it, wiped the top and took a swig before passing it to Tailgunner.

‘We may as well tell them everything,’ Morag said. There was resolve in her voice.

‘And if they’re the bad guys?’ Cat asked from behind us.

‘Hey, fuck you!’ Dog Face spat.

‘She’ll spank you again,’ Mudge said, presumably because he’d seen an opportunity to start an argument.

‘Like he spanked you. Shut up, Mudge,’ I told him.

Dog Face looked like he was about to say something as well, but Mother glanced over and he lapsed into irritable silence.

‘They’re not the bad guys,’ Morag said with conviction.

‘Hooker’s intuition?’ I asked.

Morag smiled. We’d run on her intuition for a while when we’d had nothing else.

‘You’re a hooker?’ Big Henry asked hopefully. ‘We like hookers.’

‘Sorry, darling. I’m retired.’ Then to the rest of us: ‘Bad guys live better than this. We know that.’

There was an almost childish logic to it. I was also convinced she was correct.

‘She’s right,’ Merle said. ‘These aren’t the bad guys. Bad guys know what they’re doing.’

‘Why don’t you go and fuck yourself, you arrogant prick!’ Dog Face had moved into a crouch. He looked every inch the angry war dog. He didn’t remind me so much of the Vucari as the cyber-enhanced Tosa-Inus the Cossacks had run with.

‘Put him on a leash or I will,’ Merle said.

I’d noticed him shift slightly. He was ready. Something bad was going to happen if Dog Face went for him. I felt rather than heard Cat move behind me, ready to help her brother. I think Mother noticed as well.

‘Dog Face, take it easy,’ Mother said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Big Henry took his angry brother-mech-pilot’s arm. Dog Face’s head turned to look at him. Big Henry nodded.

‘And you,’ Mother said to Merle. ‘You don’t like what we’re doing here then you can leave your supplies and fuck off.’

The others watched, waiting for Merle’s response. Tailgunner was particularly tense. He was giving Merle the hard stare. I almost wanted something to kick off. I was interested to see who’d win.

‘Does everyone with a penis want to fuck off so we can actually accomplish something?’ Morag asked.

I smiled. Behind me I could hear Cat laugh.

‘She was being just as macho,’ Mudge complained, nodding at Mother.

‘Mother may well have a penis,’ Big Henry said. ‘That’s why Tailgunner likes her so much.’

More smiles, less tension.

‘You can go with him if you want,’ Mother said deadpan.

‘All right. None of us are diplomats-’ I started.

‘I am,’ Mudge interrupted inevitably.

‘We don’t know each other so nobody wants to give,’ I continued, ignoring Mudge. ‘So let’s just try for an exchange of information and see where that gets us?’

‘I wasn’t trying to denigrate what you’ve done here,’ Merle started. ‘How could you know what was going to happen and prepare for it? This is not your kind of war.’

‘So what? You going to save us?’ Dog Face spat.

Merle ignored him. ‘My point was, we tell them and that’s more people who know. They get caught, we get compromised.’ Then he turned to Mother. ‘Unless you’re prepared to kill any of your people who get captured, or yourself if that happens.’ Merle had turned his intense brown eyes on her. The Maori woman didn’t flinch. She didn’t answer either. ‘No, of course not, because you care for these people. You want to see them safe through the war, don’t you? Admirable but fucking dangerous to us.’

‘Fine,’ Mother said tightly. ‘Then like I said, leave your supplies and fuck off.’

Dog Face was nodding. Merle turned to me. ‘They’ve got no useful intel. We’ve done the hearts and minds thing at the expense of our own supplies. We need to move on.’

He was right. I knew he was right. These were clearly good people, clearly capable at what they did, but they’d drag us down. They should have split into smaller groups and either hidden or fought in cells.

I didn’t even see the girl come out of the darkness. I hadn’t been paying attention and I’d not sensed her move. She was suddenly next to Merle and her hand slashed out at his face. I saw the sliver of metal reflected in the light. She had a small curved blade sticking out of the bottom of her fist. Merle caught the girl’s wrist. Despite her black plastic eyes I caught the look of panic on her face.

‘Strange!’ Mother shouted.

She must have realised what sort of person Merle was and that the damaged girl was courting death. Merle wasn’t quite quick enough to catch Strange’s other wrist. She drew a thin line of red down his cheek with the blade in her other fist.

I felt the FAV I was leaning against rock as Cat came off it. Strange screamed as Merle trapped her other wrist, disarmed her and put her into a painful-looking hold. I could see panic building in Strange as she struggled against him. Enthusiasm and sneakiness is rarely a match for actual skill. Mudge had his pistol in his hand. He didn’t look quite sure what to do with it. Pagan had pushed himself back. I don’t know why I didn’t move, why I didn’t do something.

‘Let her go,’ Tailgunner said. There was impending violence in his voice but something else as well. Tension.

Strange was freaking out. Struggling like a trapped animal. Tailgunner, Mother, Big Henry and Dog Face were on their feet. They didn’t care who we were, that some of us had guns in our hands, in Cat’s case a railgun; they were ready to go at us.

‘Let her go,’ I said.

Merle looked like he was going to object. Not unreasonably; he had just been slashed.

‘Now,’ I said in my best don’t-fuck-with-me NCO voice.

He looked like he was ready to tell me to fuck off but released her. Strange rolled away from him and onto her feet and hissed before backing into the shadows again, crouching like a predatory beast.

When I glanced over at Morag she was smiling. I couldn’t make out why. Maybe she liked what Strange had done. That worried me. I tried to catch her eye but either she didn’t see my look or she chose to ignore it.

‘She comes near me with a blade again, I’ll put it in her. At best,’ Merle said.

He was dabbing at the cut. Looking at the blood on his fingertips. I think he was more surprised than anything else.

‘You ever touch her-’ Tailgunner started.

‘Hey!’ I said. He looked round at me. ‘That’s a reasonable response. You don’t want her hurt, keep her under control.’

I got the feeling Tailgunner was a reasonable guy but that Strange was a weak spot for him. I also think he wasn’t used to people speaking to him the way I had. I could take him, I told myself. I almost believed it as well. Unless he had more motivation than I did. Still angry, he opened his mouth to say something else, issue another threat.

‘Enough,’ Mother said quietly and sat down.

Big Henry and Dog Face were looking at her. I think they’d expected another resolution to the situation.

‘You know what would be nice?’ Mudge said.

‘A conversation without knives, guns and potential violence?’ Pagan suggested.

Mudge nodded. I looked at him incredulously.

‘What?’ he demanded. ‘Oh yeah, I’m on a nice mellow high. Thought it would help getting to know people.’

‘That’s very responsible of you,’ Morag said.

‘Can you take it all the time?’ Cat asked from behind us.

‘Yeah, ’cause it’s fucking brilliant in a fight,’ Mudge said sarcastically.

Mother was just watching us with a raised eyebrow. Tailgunner and the others had sat back down. Mudge passed Dog Face the now half-empty bottle of vodka.

‘She has… problems,’ Mother said.

It was almost an apology coming from her. I nodded. It was obvious that bad things had happened to her.

‘Don’t fucking apologise to them,’ Tailgunner said angrily.

Mother and Tailgunner were clearly partners and long term. They were the mum and dad of this dysfunctional family but it was obvious that this caused tension between them. It wasn’t jealousy on Mother’s part but something else. I wondered if she was afraid of Strange for some reason.

‘Like I said, they’re useless to us. Nothing but trouble,’ Merle said.

He sprayed antiseptic on the cut before applying a knitter and a foam bandage to it.

‘Why were the comms on your mechs disabled?’ Pagan asked again, and again they all went quiet.

‘Tell them,’ Mother said.

‘What, all of a sudden we’re best friends?’ Tailgunner demanded.

‘They trusted us; we may as well trust them. Because you know what happens if we don’t?’ Mother paused. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘The risk-’ Tailgunner started.

‘Is the same as any other day. We’ll either live or we die.’

I was starting to warm to Mother. She was my kind of NCO, but Merle was right: she cared too much. But then again the same could be said about me. Well, when it came to Morag anyway, I cared far too much. Mudge also, sometimes, and Pagan to a degree, and I was putting off thinking about Rannu. It was a near certainty he was dead.

I was grateful it was my turn with the bottle of vodka. I took a deep long pull from it. The burn in my throat from the alcohol was a welcome change to the constant burn from the atmosphere. It still tasted like rotten eggs.

Tailgunner swallowed hard. He didn’t look happy but he told us anyway. ‘Miru, the ruler of night, warned us to separate ourselves from the spirit world.’

My heart sank.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Merle spat and turned to look at me. I wasn’t sure if he was trying to appeal to my common sense or was getting ready to walk away. Then again I didn’t fully understand why he was here. ‘We’re just wasting our time.’

‘Merle,’ Cat said from behind me, ‘back off for a bit.’

‘This is hacker religious bullshit,’ he said angrily.

‘Why don’t you show some fucking respect?’ Dog Face demanded.

I noticed that Strange was swaying in and out of the light and shadows further inside the cavern, still watching us. Glaring at Merle.

‘Why don’t you show me something to respect?’ Merle demanded.

‘I think you’re spending too much time with Mudge,’ I said to him.

‘Hey!’ Mudge said. ‘I’m behaving.’ And he was. He was also studying the patterns in the rocks intently.

‘He was like this before he met Mudge,’ Cat assured us.

Merle glared at her angrily. ‘Look, I understand that the lack of sensory information to certain parts of your brain in the net means it gets filled with religious horseshit. I understand that trancing-in presses the button on the religious gene, but this has nothing to do with why we’re here.’

‘Work on your own a lot?’ Morag asked him sarcastically.

‘Yeah, you can see why.’

‘Because you struggle to form relationships with normal people?’ Morag guessed.

Merle looked exasperated. ‘Fine, whatever, but this religious stuff still has nothing to do with what we’re trying to accomplish.’

‘Which is?’ Tailgunner asked. I saw Mother touch his leg and shake her head.

‘It’s real for them.’ I was surprised to hear this come out of my mouth. So were Pagan and Morag judging by the looks they gave me.

I think I was just sick and tired of religious discussions. I seemed to have had a lot of them in the last few months. I’d been instrumental in God’s release into the net and I’d met one of the so-called gods in there. I still had no problem being an atheist. Now I was not happy with another god rearing its head, even if only peripherally to us. I was hoping it was only operational paranoia, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that things were moving around us, helping shape events, manipulating us while staying out of sight.

‘Besides,’ said Pagan, ‘the warning seems to have had very real effects.’

Merle shook his head as if he couldn’t be bothered to argue. I hoped he was going to be quiet for a while. Suddenly Mudge started laughing. We all looked at him.

‘Normal people,’ he repeated as if he’d just got the punchline of a joke.

‘You SF types are awesome,’ Big Henry said, smiling.

‘He’s a journalist,’ Pagan, Cat and I replied at the same time.

‘A journalist and a sadly retired hooker… Wow. You really are here to rescue us.’

‘Tell them the rest,’ Mother said, apparently unimpressed with the banter.

‘We’ve got a little piece of it,’ Tailgunner said.

‘A piece of what?’ Pagan asked carefully.

‘The Black Wave,’ the big hacker answered.

Pagan and Morag gaped at him. I must have been doing the same thing. Even Merle looked up. Mudge was leaning closer to the smooth rock floor. We’d bored him earlier in the conversation, it seemed.

‘How?’ I asked.

‘Miru, the ruler of the night, gave me an eel net to cast at-’ Tailgunner started.

‘Okay, never mind. Forget I asked,’ I said.

Tailgunner looked a little pissed off.

‘Can you not be fucking serious?’ Merle asked.

Tailgunner turned to look at him. There was something about the situation that reminded me of the time the two hardest guys in Fintry had confronted each other when I was a kid.

‘He is,’ Morag said, obviously fascinated.

‘And this is important,’ Pagan said. ‘You mean to say that one of the gods of Maori mythology-’

‘Don’t call it a mythology, pakeha,’ Tailgunner warned him.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pagan apologised, though I don’t think he knew what pakeha meant. ‘But one of your gods gave you a program of some kind?’

Tailgunner nodded. ‘A program that I can’t understand. Just like the eel it caught.’

‘Huh?’ I managed intelligently.

‘The piece of the Black Wave I caught, it looked like an eel in the net,’ Tailgunner explained.

‘Did you see the Wave?’ Pagan asked.

‘Yes, and yes, it looked like a big black wave. It ignored every piece of security, every defence in the site as if it wasn’t there. It co-opted some of my security programs, changing them as I watched, and took control of every net-linked system.’

Pagan and Morag were nodding as they listened. He was confirming everything we’d guessed about Demiurge’s capabilities. Except that somehow he’d managed to effect Demiurge. Still I was always suspicious of these little shards of hope. Particularly when deities were involved.

‘There was something else there,’ Tailgunner continued, ‘high above the Wave. They looked like angels.’

Morag tried to suppress the shudder of fear, but I could read her body language too well. I don’t think anyone else noticed.

‘The angels are chimerical hackers,’ Pagan said, glancing over at Morag.

‘They have attack programs derived from Demiurge. Very powerful.’ Morag just about managed to keep the fear out of her voice.

‘Where is all this shit coming from?’ Big Henry asked. ‘And why’s it so much more dangerous than our stuff.’

‘These Freedom Squadron wankers. When we attacked them they were like Them inside. They’re infiltrators, right? They’ve finally got sophisticated. Info warfare, that sort of thing,’ Dog Face growled.

The four of them were looking at us expectantly. Now it was our turn to look uncomfortable.

‘It’s kind of a long story,’ I said.

‘We could show them Mudge’s documentary,’ Pagan suggested.

It took us a while to tell them what had happened. The affable-through-narcotics Mudge plugged himself into a monitor and did indeed show them part of the documentary he’d made. I felt he spent too much time on the kicking I’d got at the hands of Rannu in New York. He claimed it was to see if they recognised him. They didn’t. Pagan and Mudge did most of the talking.

‘Bullshit!’ Dog Face spat. He had drool around his mouth.

‘It was all a lie. The Cabal started the war and kept it going,’ Pagan assured him.

We’d been through this several times. Explained the Cabal’s reasons and their mechanisms of control, how they pulled it off but the whanau hadn’t lived it like we had. In many ways the concept of a sixty-year war as a con job was just too big. They looked stricken, pale, almost nauseous. Most people could understand the idea of a defensive war and the hardships and sacrifices that would mean, particularly if you’d grown up practically on the front line like these guys had, but to find out the whole thing was a lie? It meant that all you’d suffered, everyone you’d lost — the whole thing — had been for the profit of a tiny minority of people. They had just been told that everything they knew, their reality for all their lives, was a lie. Denial was a reasonable reaction. The anger that would come later was also a reasonable reaction. I almost felt like we should apologise to them.

‘How do we know which story to believe?’ Mother asked.

She looked shaken but her voice was even and calm. That stumped me. The truth was self-evident to us. We’d lived it. But all we were giving them was another story.

‘Yeah, no offence, but you’re asking us to take a lot on faith,’ Tailgunner said.

‘You know there’s something wrong,’ Morag said.

He nodded.

‘Your own god warned you,’ Pagan added.

I said, ‘I’m afraid you’re just going to have to decide which you believe. Though you could ask yourselves what possible reason we’d have to jump into hell’s creation, tab and drive all the way here just to fuck with your heads. I don’t want to be here.’

‘And this Cronin, the guy on the viz, and this Rolleston guy, they’re to blame?’ Big Henry asked.

‘They used to work for the Cabal, now I guess they are the Cabal,’ I told them and then watched them war with what we’d told them some more.

‘Look, you seem on the level,’ Tailgunner started. ‘But what if you’ve been slaved? What if you really believe but you’ve been brainwashed by the taniwha?’

‘The what?’ I asked.

‘Them,’ Mother said. She was deep in thought and I could not read her expression at all. Her calmness was weird, almost unsettling.

‘Then again, why are we taking so much time to convince you?’ Pagan asked. ‘Bit solipsistic, isn’t it?’ Everyone just looked at him.

‘Try and remember you’re talking to a bunch of squaddies,’ I suggested.

‘There is only me,’ Mudge said as if it was a revelation.

‘We are all playthings of your imagination,’ Morag said to him with mock earnestness.

The levity wasn’t working. We’d fractured their world too badly.

‘Okay, so I’ve got a question,’ Mother said. We looked at her. ‘So what?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Pagan said. I didn’t either.

‘What difference does it make? The Cabal pulled our strings, made us fight for sixty years. Nothing we can do about it now.’

‘ Utu,’ Tailgunner said quietly.

Mother turned to him. ‘Really? How’s that going to work then? Look, I agree with you about our ancestors, our spirituality, but the fact is we’re not mythical heroes out of the past. We don’t have anything like the resources to fight, and doing it on principle is a shitty reason for us all to finally get killed.’

‘Because it’s the right thing to do.’ I was surprised that I said it. And after I said it I realised how hollow it sounded.

‘Well, I congratulate you on being able to afford such a keen moral compass. Again, I don’t want to die for a principle. Particularly as I don’t think it matters to us what war we’re fighting or who’s in command. It’s not going to change things for us and the end result is exactly the same,’ Mother said.

‘But we changed things,’ Morag said. There was almost desperation in her voice. ‘People can see what’s going on now. The Cabal can’t do those things any more.’

‘Really? Is anyone trying to subvert your god yet?’ Mother asked. She read the answer in Morag’s miserable expression. ‘Things getting better for the poor?’

‘These things take time,’ Pagan told her.

‘The powerful and wealthy are always going to fight for what’s theirs. You expose them and they find another, more subtle way to get what they want.’

‘So why fight them?’ Merle asked.

Mother flashed him a look of contempt.

‘Survival. I grew up in Moa City. For more than half my early life the place was under siege. Now I found out we did this to our-fucking-selves? And now we’re scrapping over the wreckage of humanity. Fuck that. This has got nothing to do with us. We’ll sit this one out.’

‘And starve to death,’ Merle pointed out.

‘And do what we have to,’ Mother continued. ‘Because when the smoke clears I’ll bet my left tit it won’t make the slightest bit of difference to any of my people.’

‘That’s what they want us to think and do. To give in, to forget about our personal responsibility…’ Mudge surprised me, but it was similar to what he’d said on Atlantis. Underneath the drugs and lust for adrenalin Mudge actually believed this stuff.

‘I guess it’s more comfortable on Earth?’ Mother asked rhetorically. ‘Because here idealism is pretty much a luxury. We have other priorities. Democracy’s been a joke for years. Why should I care which fucking faceless military dictatorship I live under? I’m still fighting and dying for some other fucker. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’

‘We were doing something,’ Morag said. Again she sounded desperate.

I could see where Mother was coming from to a degree, but I think we’d pulled her world down around her ears and now she was going to do the same with our accomplishments, if you could call them that.

‘Really? Get here on your own? Finance your own gear? Or were you sent? Who sent you? Because I’m willing to bet it was just a different flavour of government or military power broker, playing another version of an old game.’

‘What if it’s not dictatorship this time?’ Pagan asked. ‘What if it’s slavery?’

‘Are you just saying that or have you got any evidence?’ Tailgunner asked.

‘It’s a suspicion. Operators sent before us returned brainwashed and you said yourself that when you lose people you get compromised almost immediately.’

‘That’s a reason to hide -’ Mother started.

‘And starve.’ Merle wasn’t getting off that point.

‘- not fight.’

‘Well that’s your choice, isn’t it? You either fight, hide or surrender,’ I said.

Big Henry and Dog Face bristled at the word surrender. These guys might be street-bred scavengers, brawlers, thieves and survivors, but they had pride.

‘I’ve known Rolleston for a long time. You surrender, you’ll get used or killed. You hide, you’ll starve, or if you raid for supplies then sooner or later he’ll get round to hunting you down when you become a big enough pain in the arse. Besides, if you’re going to fight for supplies you may as well just fight. You ask, why fight? Survival. The rest is window dressing to provide a little bit of hope for motivational purposes,’ I said.

Mother stared at me. Finally she gave a humourless laugh.

‘See, that’s a language I understand,’ she told me.

It looked like I’d found a way to motivate her.

Strange walked out of the darkness and lay down next to Mother, her head in the older woman’s lap. Mother started stroking the girl’s long dark hair.

‘So can we see the fragment of Demiurge?’ Pagan asked.

Tailgunner opened his mouth to reply.

‘Not so fast,’ Mother said. ‘What do we get?’

‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Have you not been listening?’ Merle demanded angrily.

I was smiling. I liked this woman. Her survival skills were keenly honed. I could see why they looked to her.

‘What do you want?’ I asked.

‘Help,’ she said. She had not liked saying that.

‘Supplies?’ I asked.

She nodded.

‘You’re taking her seriously. We can take this bit of Demiurge any time we-’ Merle started.

I turned on him. ‘That’s enough. If we can take from the enemy, deny them supplies, fuck with their infrastructure, than that’s part of our remit here. We also need more intel. You don’t like that, you think you’re better off on your own, then fuck off.’

It was a gamble. He could just leave, and we needed him, but I couldn’t have him questioning everything like this. Chinese Parliament or not, he was proving disruptive. Not to mention it was fucking wearing. He was angry. I could see that. Bruised pride. Politics was so tiresome. I was a little worried he might try and kill me. There was more than a possibility he was capable of succeeding. I could see his point. We weren’t the well-oiled machine he was used to; also he was a solo act, used to doing things his way. But we were making this up as we went along, out of necessity. The whole thing was a juggling act and he needed to help or leave.

Mudge turned to him. ‘Merle, I think you need to wind your neck in a bit or this just won’t work.’

Merle opened his mouth to respond angrily.

‘Merle,’ Cat said.

I turned round to look at her. She was still on guard, cradling her gyroscopically supported railgun. Merle didn’t say anything. He just nodded and relaxed.

‘You help us; we’ll help you,’ Mother said.