War in Heaven

19

Disappointment. I’m alive. I can still hear Rannu screaming. I can still feel the manacles around my wrists and ankles. I’m still lying on a soiled cot wondering when this will be over. The air still tastes like licking a battery, still smells of rotten eggs, and I know that when I open my eyes the sky will still be very far away.

Our escape now made sense. I didn’t want to think about it too much at the time, that’s how insidious hope can be. Where was all the security when we escaped from Moa City? Regardless of how good Rannu is, he couldn’t have hidden for that long in such a small area, not with the level of technology the Black Squadrons were using. They had let us go. We were under their control the entire time.

Mudge was sitting on the cot next to mine smoking a cigarette. He didn’t look happy.

‘Morning,’ I said.

He stood up, walked over to my cot and punched me hard enough in the nose to break it despite the subcutaneous armour.

‘Fuck!’ I shouted. ‘I was fucking possessed, you bastard!’ Mudge smiled.

‘Standard Operating Procedure for being called a faggot — not that it happens a lot these days. You’re lucky it was me and not Merle. Still, now we can be friends again.’

He reached down into his backpack and produced a bottle of vodka. I looked around. All his gear was in there. It looked like he’d been here a while. Watching over me. I didn’t deserve this, and what’s worse I didn’t really have the words to express my gratitude. He followed my eyes.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he told me. Days of this bullshit and he was waiting with the booze. I pushed myself up into a sitting position as he passed me the bottle and he sparked up a joint. The atmosphere made the booze taste like battery acid. It was the best thing I’d ever drank.

‘Not to be trusted?’ I asked, lifting the manacles.

‘We’ve got to be sure, man. What happened to you, Rannu, the Vucari and I guess the other special forces types they sent back is unprecedented. What we did is more so. You’re in a position to cause us a lot of hurt.’ Then he looked away. I guessed I’d already done that. ‘Not to mention the Maori contingent’s very big on reciprocity.’

‘Can’t say I blame them. Merle?’

‘Fucked off about his face, but he can get that fixed in the unlikely event we don’t all die. He may be pissed off about the prospect of an ugly-looking corpse, though secretly I think he digs the scar-face look. He saved you, man. When… you know…’ When Morag made a concerted and premeditated attempt to murder me. Oh yeah, I owed Merle.

‘I guess I’ve got some apologies to make.’ Except it couldn’t be done. I couldn’t escape from the things I’d said or done. It didn’t matter that I was under the influence. It was still my face and form that did it, and with the best will in the world human psychology doesn’t let the victim move away from that. I was quiet for a little while, thinking this through, enjoying the familiarity of alcohol and sweet smoke burning my throat. Hiding from my problems.

‘What happened to you guys?’ I asked. I couldn’t look at Mudge’s lenses when I did. I was pretty sure he knew what I was thinking. That he could see my guilt.

‘I don’t know how much you saw, but we got jumped by a couple of those Black Squadron wankers.’ He paused and looked up at me. ‘They’re hard. Augmented, like Rolleston, though not as dangerous.’

‘I saw some of that. How’d you get out?’

‘Merle. He took a battering when the Walker went up but he was still alive. It seems that they die just as well with a plasma shot to the head. I’m not joking, Jakob, the guy’s a one-man slaughterhouse.’ There was a degree of pride in his man behind Mudge’s words. He was right as well. Merle had been very useful. I was looking forward to thanking him.

‘Morag?’

Mudge laughed humourlessly. ‘How’d you think? The Grey Lady? Jesus Christ, Jakob, what were you thinking? If you wanted the ultimate adrenalin fuck you’d have been as well shagging a live-firing plasma cannon. Was she any good?’

Yes, actually, but I had no intention of telling Mudge that.

‘They killed Morag in front of my eyes. I watched her die. It was sense but I knew nothing. I spilled my guts.’

‘Well, we knew you’d break. Everyone does.’

‘I didn’t even try to hold out, not when I thought I could still help Morag.’

‘It’s all right, man. Most of us got out alive.’ He was trying to make me feel better but I could tell he was uneasy with this. He wouldn’t look at me.

‘Look Mudge, I knew some things about Earth’s defences…’

Mudge didn’t answer. There was nothing really to say. I had after all betrayed my entire race. I was looking at him expectantly. I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him. Even if he told me it was okay, we’d both know it was a lie, and Mudge rarely lied. It was why he was so annoying at times.

‘What do you want me to say?’ he finally asked. ‘It’s a fucked-up situation. I don’t really see what else you would have done, not with Morag on the line. I’d tell you that you had no choice but you’re going to be torturing yourself for a very long time despite anything I could say. Question is, what are we going to do now?’

‘It might be better if I just put a beam through my head,’ I said, quietly going for a bit of a paddle in self-loathing.

‘See, that’s the Jakob I know and love,’ Mudge said acidly. ‘Why fucking do anything when you can just feel sorry for yourself?’

‘Fuck you, Mudge. They made me,’ I told him. Trying to muster anger and ending up with pathetic bluster instead.

‘Yeah, I know that and you know that. The question is, can you get over it and be of use?’

‘How? I just gave them Earth’s weaknesses.’ I sounded desperate to myself.

‘See, this is the problem with feeling sorry for yourself. It’s so selfish. You think the world revolves around you. Bad things happen-’

‘To me, not you-’

‘Shut up, you miserable piece of shit,’ Mudge spat at me. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this after what I’d been through. ‘Stop your fucking whining, stop obsessing on Morag and concentrate on your job.’

‘The job’s fucked-’

‘I said shut up. If you’re just going to use this as another fucking excuse to feel sorry for yourself and to give up then I won’t even fucking shoot you. I’ll just leave you here to shit yourself to death. You want to think about something, think about what Rolleston’s done to you.’

I stared at him. I couldn’t even get angry with him. Instead I heard two shots and saw my lover become meat as her corpse hit the cold stone floor of a cell. I saw the corpses of Mother’s people on the ground. The people we’d killed. I thought about Rolleston. There was something warm about the thought. I took another mouthful of vodka and another long drag of the spliff. Mudge watched me intently. Pride was trying to make me angry with Mudge. It was failing. He was right. I knew where my anger and hate was going to be aimed. Like a gun.

‘If it’s any consolation,’ he finally said, ‘it was Morag who insisted that we exorcise you rather than kill you. Even after you told her you’d fucked the Grey Lady.’

‘Sure that wasn’t so I was conscious when she killed me?’ I asked, misery creeping back into my tone.

‘No,’ Mudge said, shrugging.

‘I’m pretty sure that she could have killed me if she really wanted to.’

‘Probably best you tell yourself that.’

He reached forward and took the bottle and the spliff away from me. In the background I could hear Rannu screaming in a language I didn’t understand.

‘You haven’t exorcised Rannu yet?’ I asked, surprised.

‘We can’t,’ he told me grimly.

I felt a lurch inside. ‘What? How come, if you could do me?’

‘You’ll need to speak to Morag — well maybe not Morag, maybe Pagan or Salem about that.’

I didn’t like this at all. We needed Rannu and more to the point he deserved to be free.

‘Where’d you find him?’

‘Salem? He walked into the camp. Tailgunner knew him from the old neighbourhood. Seemed he had some kind of software business but also did exorcisms. He’d seen some of the resistance info and had been of the opinion that something was up anyway. Tailgunner said there was a rumour that he was one of the Immortals.’ That woke me up.

‘Shit! Really?’

‘Apparently he’s never spoken about it but that’s the rumour.’

The Immortals were legends in the special forces community. Back at the beginning of the war, They had successfully assaulted New Hebron. The first footage of Them massacring any and all humans was played back to a shocked Sirius. Despite orders to the contrary, a joint Israeli and Palestinian special forces unit commandeered as many heavy-lift gunships as it could find. Had them flown to New Hebron and, during some fierce street-by-street fighting, managed to create a cordon between Them and some of the civilian survivors, allowing them to be evacuated. The Palestinians and the Israelis lost more than three quarters of their force. This had been planned for. The transports had been full when they flew to New Hebron and full — of civilians — on the way out. This meant that the unit had no out until the transports returned. This was unlikely however as most of the transports had been commandeered at gunpoint. One transport returned. Even then people were left on the ground to cover its takeoff.

The special forces unit was so secretive that its name was never released. In the media they had been nicknamed the Immortals. At Hereford during my SAS training we’d studied the operation. I remember the transcript of their court martial. When the highest-ranking surviving officer was asked why they had disobeyed orders he simply said, ‘Because our leaders had forgotten that dangerous men and women like us exist to defend our people.’ They had been acquitted. It was nearly sixty years ago. That made Salem the oldest person I’d ever met not augmented by Themtech, and he’d walked from Moa City to here. It was kind of humbling.

‘You don’t suppose he’d speak to us about it, do you?’ I asked, forgetting myself.

‘Fanboy,’ Mudge told me as he lit up a small laser cutter.

‘Er, what are you doing?’

Keep my eyes forward, head high. Ignore the stares. Ignore the looks of hatred. Everyone stopped and there were a lot of hard black lenses watching me as I walked across the cave.

The cave was incredible, huge with stalactites hanging from the ceiling like an inverted field of some strange crop. The ceiling was almost a dome, the centre of it a large hole surrounded by the stalactites. The floor of the cave was a gently smoking milky pool broken by stalagmites and smooth tables of rock. The largest of these tables was in the middle of the pool underneath the hole. The Bismarck-class quadruped mech Apakura stood on the table, an unmoving metal sentinel. Its spotlights helped illuminate the cave. Four heavy-duty cables were attached to winches on its upper leg assembly. They ran up through the hole in the cavern roof.

People were congregated on the ledges around the cave and on the smooth stone beach that broke the surface of the pool. I almost didn’t notice the smell of rotten eggs any more. It was cold and humid at the same time.

Of course the majestic cave had excellent acoustics, which meant that we could hear Rannu’s screams echoing off the stone. That probably didn’t help anyone’s mood. He’d chewed through every gag they’d given him.

‘They are raping and killing your families like vermin as you hide here!’ he screamed.

Our killing spree aside, the numbers looked light. Mother clearly had a problem with desertion. I couldn’t say I blamed them. I hoped that they’d gone to the End and not back home. By now Rolleston’s people would know who they were. I also hoped that they’d gone before the last move so none of them could spill the whereabouts of this pa to the Black Squadrons.

There was a group of people standing on an outcrop in front of a large recessed area. In the recess half in shadow was one of the two Landsknecht-class mechs. It looked like a giant metal soldier standing guard. It held its plasma cannon like an oversized assault rifle. On the ledge in front of the mech were Salem, Mother, Tailgunner, Pagan, Merle, Cat and Morag. I couldn’t see Big Henry anywhere. They all stopped talking and turned to look at me as Mudge and I approached. In fact the whole cave had gone silent except for Rannu’s screamed threats.

I found out where Strange was when she shot out of the shadows and slashed at my face with one of her little curved knives. I saw the movement and tried to react, almost falling into the pool below, but she caught me, just opening the skin of my face, the blade scraping against my subcutaneous armour. I was standing precariously on the lip of the path but managed to catch her wrist as she slashed at me with the other blade. I swung her in front of me and locked up both her arms as best I could. She struggled like a wild thing. She was crying now. It may have been the first sound I’d heard from her.

‘Let her go.’ Not loud, but Tailgunner’s voice carried. His tone promised imminent violence.

‘Calm down,’ I told Strange pointlessly. ‘Only if she’s not going to slash me again,’ I told Tailgunner. He had nearly reached the pair of us. His face was a patchwork of healing bruises and contusions from his fight with Rannu. A fight he shouldn’t have been able to win.

‘Then let her slash you,’ he said as he reached me.

Morag was a step behind him. She stepped past Tailgunner and held out her hand to Strange.

‘It’s okay,’ she told the girl. Strange’s struggling seemed to lessen. There was even momentary surprise on Tailgunner’s face.

All around the massive cave I could see Mother’s people watching, violent expectation on their faces. They wanted to see Tailgunner kick the shit out of me. I’d probably let him. I’d had enough of violence.

I let Strange go. She turned and hissed at me but let Morag wrap her arms around her and lead her away. Morag glared over her shoulder to let me know this was my fault.

I felt Tailgunner grab my shirt and push me so I was leaning out over the pool. I just let him. I looked at him lens to lens. I wondered if he really thought he could do anything to me.

‘One of my people wants to hurt you, you let them,’ he told me.

It was too late for that. To his mind he’d already failed to protect his people. Not just the fact that we’d killed some of them but also because we were still alive. I just looked at him.

‘We’re wasting time,’ Mudge said impatiently.

‘When this is over there will have to be payment,’ Tailgunner told me.

I nodded. He pulled me back onto the path. The five of us headed back up to the ledge in front of the Landsknecht. Morag walked with Strange, her arms still around the sobbing girl.

‘You sure it’s him?’ Cat asked Mudge. I couldn’t read her expression.

He shrugged. ‘I’d be surprised if anyone else could indulge in that amount of self-pity.’

‘It’s him,’ Morag said, her tone guarded, her body language angry.

‘This is Kopuwai. It was named after a dog-headed monster. It was Dog Face’s mech,’ Mother told me. Her tone was one of barely contained rage. I think the grieving for Dog Face had been done in private away from prying eyes.

Kopuwai was like the giant metal ghost of Dog Face looking down on me, judging me. I swallowed and nodded. There wasn’t a lot I could say. They knew at some level that it hadn’t been me, but any protest now would sound like an excuse.

I looked around at their faces. Pagan’s was the least hostile but he wouldn’t meet my eyes. Merle was next to him. Even through the medgel I could see the scar I’d given him had turned his mouth into an angry puckered leer.

‘I think Jakob understands how we all feel,’ Pagan started.

Tailgunner and Mother turned to give him a look of angry contempt and he went quiet.

‘How’s your arse?’ I asked.

Pagan looked a bit taken aback by the question but I needed people distracted.

‘Lost some meat, bad scar,’ he told me.

‘He won’t let me look at it. He’ll let Merle look but not me. That’s favouritism that is,’ Mudge said, trying to lighten the tone.

‘Merle’s a trained medic,’ Pagan said, exasperated. They had presumably had this discussion before.

‘We have to record things for posteriority.’ There were few smiles.

While they were looking at Mudge I made my move. I grabbed the butt of Cat’s Void Eagle. It was holstered at her hip. The smartgrip holster held on to it. I’d expected this. I downloaded an old holster-cracking code I’d bought from Vicar through my palm-link interface and into the pistol. There was a moment of resistance from the holster just as people realised that something was happening and started to move. Vicar’s code won. The pistol was heavy and comforting in my hand. I stepped away from everyone and brought the pistol up to bear.

Mudge was drawing his Sig but wasn’t sure what to do with it. Pagan stepped back, a look of confusion on his face as he dropped his staff and went for his sidearm. Cat at first reached to stop me and then went for the cut-down shotgun strapped to her other leg. She brought it up. Mother, Strange and Tailgunner all went for their PDWs but were much slower. The magazines on their weapons were still unfolding as the other guns came to bear. Salem simply took a few steps back. His face was the same calm mask it had been since I’d walked up.

Merle didn’t go for his weapon because he was looking down the barrel of a Void Eagle.

‘I thought he was all right!’ Cat hissed.

‘He is,’ Salem said simply. There was no trace of doubt in his voice.

‘We completely checked him,’ Pagan said, exasperated, still not sure what to do with his pistol. Morag was nodding. She was looking confused as well but had no problem pointing a gun at me.

‘Put the gun down,’ Mudge told me.

‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ Merle asked quietly.

‘Why am I alive, Merle?’ I asked.

‘A mixture of dumb luck and people who lack the professionalism to know when they should cut their losses, as far as I can tell,’ Merle answered.

‘Look, I don’t know what you think you know but we can have this conversation without the pointing of guns,’ Mudge said. He was worried. Joking apart, I was his best, possibly only, friend and I was pointing a gun at his lover.

‘Put the gun down now,’ Cat told me. I think the trigger on her shotgun was squeezed to the furthest point it could be without the weapon going off. I think she’d had more than enough of my own personal horror show. I knew she would have been furious about what I’d said to Morag when I’d been possessed.

‘Don’t be so fucking childish, Jakob!’ This from Morag.

‘They knew. Their response time was too quick. They weren’t waiting for us but they were not far off,’ I said. I could see from their faces that they had considered this. ‘Rolleston told me that we’d been sold out by two people.’

‘Well there’s a source we can trust,’ Mudge said sarcastically.

‘Jakob, you’ve no idea,’ Morag started. ‘While you were getting beaten up by your date Merle saved us.’

Mudge and Pagan were nodding but there was something off about Pagan’s expression.

‘You were the one who was so keen that we kill ourselves rather than be caught. If you had the position to help Mudge and the others further down the alley then you had line of sight to take me out,’ I said to him.

‘That’s not what this is about,’ Merle said. His tone reminded me of the voice I’d heard coming from my mouth when I was locked in my gilded cage. ‘You’re trying to find someone else to blame.’

From the looks on Pagan, Mudge, Mother and Tailgunner’s faces they knew that I was right. Morag was less sure as she was newer to the dynamics of gunfights.

‘Why am I still alive, Merle?’

‘You know I can take that gun off you any time I want?’ he asked me.

‘Stop pointing my gun at my brother!’ Cat hissed, but it was written all over her face that she knew I was right too.

‘Do you think I care what happens now?’ I asked. ‘Either you answer my question or I put a bullet through your head and damn the consequences.’

By now Tailgunner and Mother were lowering their weapons. Strange turned her PDW on Merle.

‘Strange!’ Morag shouted.

I’d glanced at the girl for a moment. Merle could only have told from a slight movement around my lenses, but by the time I was back concentrating fully on him he had both Hammerli Arbiters in his hands. He was fast. One was pointing at me and the other at Strange.

‘Woah!’ Tailgunner shouted as he turned on Merle. Cat brought her shotgun to bear on Tailgunner. Mother aimed her PDW at Cat.

‘Oh this is fucking stupid.’ Morag lowered her pistol.

‘Not if we’ve got a traitor in the mix,’ I said.

‘I’m better than you; I’m faster than you. Drop the gun,’ Merle told me.

‘Oh but mate, it’s a size game, isn’t it. Mine’s bigger than yours. I don’t doubt you’ll be accurate but I fancy my chances at surviving a burst in the face. Your pretty face on the other hand becomes a mess on the wall,’ I told him.

‘I think you should compare sizes,’ Morag said, holstering her pistol.

‘Me too,’ Mudge agreed. There wasn’t much humour there.

‘What about the girl? Maybe you live but she’s dead and you know it.’

‘Anything happens to her and you die as well, Jakob,’ Tailgunner told me. I felt he was being a little unfair.

‘She can put the gun down and walk away any time she wants,’ I said through gritted teeth. Strange helpfully shook her head. I didn’t like having anyone as unpredictable as her involved whether she was on my side or not.

‘Take another step and weird girl dies,’ Merle told Morag. She’d acted like the whole thing was stupid but had been moving back, jockeying to get position on Merle. Morag froze and looked pissed off.

‘Why would he betray you and then fight so hard for the rest of us?’ Mudge asked.

‘I couldn’t figure that out either. If he was still working for the Cabal then he could have destroyed us a long time ago,’ I said.

‘The orders must have come from Earth…’ Pagan said.

‘Something you want to add?’ I asked. Pagan looked stricken. This I hadn’t expected. What the fuck was going on?

‘Don’t buy into his paranoid fantasy; it’s guilt transference, that’s all,’ Merle spat.

‘He was in a hole for six months. He was comms dark the entire time,’ Mudge said. There was desperation in his voice. He needed Merle to not be the traitor. I think that this was the most vulnerable I’d ever seen him. Emotionally. Physically, the wanking on the Hydra still won out.

‘Which means that one of us had to deliver it,’ I said. ‘This where you came in, Pagan?’ I asked.

Pagan shook his head miserably and looked like he was about to say something.

‘The encrypted message,’ Cat said. Now she sounded stricken. I remembered watching brother and sister communicating by hardlink on the Tetsuo Chou on the way out.

‘What message?’ Morag demanded.

‘Shut up, Cat,’ Merle said angrily.

Cat swallowed hard. ‘Sharcroft gave me a heavily encrypted message to deliver to Merle,’ she said miserably.

‘You know better than that!’ Merle was livid now.

‘You should have told us,’ Morag said quietly.

Mudge pointed his Sig at Merle.

‘Why’d you sell us out?’ he asked. His tone was hard and you would have had to know him as well as I did to know how much this was costing him.

‘Are we breaking up, lover?’ was the sarcastic response. If Strange hadn’t been on the line I probably would have shot him then.

‘This mission’s hard on relationships,’ Morag commented with inappropriate dryness.

‘Look, shoot Jakob if you want, but stop pointing the gun at Strange,’ Tailgunner told Merle.

‘I’m sure you’re a big man down here but I’ll walk through you to get out of here,’ Merle told the big Maori.

‘Look around you, wanker,’ Mother spat.

I glanced around. The Kiwis were all aiming guns, some were pointed at me — couldn’t say I blamed them — but most at Merle.

Cat lowered her shotgun.

Merle spared her a look of contempt. ‘You always were a disappointment. Always folding when times are tough.’

‘Fuck you!’ Her voice echoed around the massive cave. ‘We’ve done enough damage.’ More quietly. She walked over and stood between Strange and Merle. Nobody seemed to care if I got shot.

‘It’s a death sentence now,’ I told him.

He looked around at the circle of guns. ‘That doesn’t mean I’ll tell you shit,’ he said as he lowered his pistols.

Everyone relaxed a little. Mother covered as Tailgunner moved in to disarm Merle.

‘He’s got a Void Eagle on his hip and two blades on wrist hoppers. Careful you don’t touch the blades,’ I warned Tailgunner.

‘What were your orders?’ Mudge asked. His pistol was hanging limp at his side. His voice was flat, completely devoid of emotion. Merle ignored him.

‘Come on. We’ve got most of it,’ I told Merle. ‘You’re completely compromised, nothing to bargain for or gain at this point.’

‘Call it professional pride,’ Merle said grimly.

‘Call it being a wanker,’ Tailgunner muttered.

‘You have not acted well,’ Salem surprised me by telling Merle. ‘You have caused much pain. If you persist in this then I will make sure you talk.’ The man’s gravitas was such that I felt like Merle had just been judged. Merle swallowed but said nothing. Who the fuck was this guy? I could see why people could believe he had been one of the Immortals. There was total self-belief there, no doubt whatsoever in his capabilities. Merle could see that as well.

‘Merle, stop being an arsehole!’ Cat said, turning on her brother.

‘Oh well, since you put it that way, I’ll abandon op sec!’ he spat at her with derision.

‘I’ll beat it out of you myself,’ she muttered.

Mudge put a gun to Merle’s head.

‘Three,’ he said.

‘Mudge?’ Pagan and Morag said at the same time. Tailgunner took a step back. Cat stepped towards Mudge. I moved to intercept her.

‘You’ll get him killed,’ I told her.

Mudge didn’t handle personal betrayal well. He’d been despondent back in Maw City after Gregor. It had taken Morag and me a long time to convince him that it hadn’t really been Gregor; that Rolleston had killed him with Crom before he’d left Earth.

‘Two,’ Mudge said.

‘You serious about this?’ Merle asked.

‘What do you think?’ Mudge asked.

It went very quiet. The quiet seemed to last for a very long time. I think Mudge was trying to give his lover every chance he could. I saw Mudge start to squeeze the Sig’s trigger as he began to form ‘One’ with his mouth.

‘All right,’ Merle said quietly.

Mudge held the gun where it was, touching Merle’s temple. Mudge was too close. Merle could have disarmed him any time he wanted. That wasn’t the point. The point was that Mudge was prepared to pull the trigger.

‘You can lower the gun now. I believe you,’ Merle told him. Mudge didn’t move.

‘Mudge,’ Morag said softly. I could see he was still thinking about pulling the trigger. ‘Come on, love.’ Morag reached up and pulled Mudge’s hand down. The tension seemed to drain out of him.

Mudge turned to me. ‘Goddamn you.’

‘I’m sorry.’ It was all I had. It wasn’t nearly adequate for any of this fucking mess. Mudge walked off.

‘Can we have this conversation without any more guns being waved about?’ Morag asked. I handed Cat back her Void Eagle.

‘Sorry,’ I told her. She just holstered the pistol. ‘Well?’ I asked Merle.

‘Disinformation,’ he said. ‘Or are you egotistical enough to think that the prime minister of England -’

‘Britain,’ I corrected automatically. Americans never got that right.

‘- was really going to share Earth’s defence weaknesses and strategies with a lowly grunt?’

I just stared at him. Of course he was right. I was so fucking stupid.

‘So Earth’s not as weak as she told me?’ I finally managed to ask.

‘Right,’ he said.

‘But-’ Tailgunner started.

‘A very few of the operators sent out were set up to hear that information one way or another. The PM and her allies-’

‘Including Sharcroft,’ a miserable-looking Pagan interjected.

‘I suspect including whoever’s left of the Cabal will be shitting themselves. Anyway, they are going to go to the governments on Earth and say, “Look, this is what we’ve done. Unless we unite and work together we are fucked.”’

Mother blew air out between her teeth. ‘That’s pretty ballsy.’

‘You were a sacrifice. I gave a vague warning before the robbery and then dropped a dime on you as it began, and you played your part brilliantly. They didn’t even have to torture you from what I heard.’ He was back to good old contemptuous Merle.

‘You brought them down on us?’ Tailgunner said, nodding towards me. Rannu was still howling violent obscenities.

‘Hey, fuck you. Why are you all so fucking precious? We’re soldiers. Expendable. See, if they were on to me I’d firestorm my memory and kill myself. I don’t have time to turn the plasma rifle on my head so I’ve got a couple of internal suicide systems, but you all just whine. This worked because they were pretty sure that you were too weak to kill yourself and because you’d break quickly.’

Played. We’d all been played.

Tailgunner didn’t look happy. He punched Merle in the stomach. The punch lifted Merle off his feet and doubled him over. Tailgunner looked at Merle with utter contempt. Merle straightened up and spat in Tailgunner’s face. They went at it. Morag was right. There was far too much testosterone around here.

‘Hey!’ Best sergeant’s voice. They ignored me.

‘Pack it in now.’ This from Mother. She was much quieter than I’d been. Tailgunner stopped and Merle relented as well.

‘You didn’t though, did you?’ I asked Merle.

‘What?’ he gasped. He was fighting for breath.

‘Kill yourself when we were on to you.’

He straightened himself up and wiped blood away from his mouth.

‘Well, what are you going to do? I’m loyal to Earth. I’m not working with the bad guys. I think you know that and I’m the best you’ve got.’ All probably true. He wasn’t just loyal, he was a fucking fanatic. ‘But here’s the thing. Now you all know, that’s just multiplied the exposure and the chance of this plan, probably the best plan we have, being fucked up.’ Also right. He grinned savagely and turned to me. ‘So I’m sorry everyone got killed and you were rude to your girlfriend.’ I couldn’t help glancing at Morag. Her face may as well have been made out of the same stone as the cave. ‘But you’re one lucky motherfucker to even be here so relax. It worked and you’re alive.’

I just stared at him.

‘Any other secret missions you want to share?’ Morag asked. I could see the conflict on Merle’s face. Morag was angry. ‘Look, arsehole, I find you’re holding out on us and I will plug myself into your head and kill you the hard way,’ the eighteen-year-old Dundonian girl told the hardened assassin. And he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. What the fuck was going on here?

‘Just one,’ he said. ‘I’m being paid a staggering amount of money to kill Rolleston.’

‘Join the queue,’ I told him.

He gave me a look of contempt that made me want to hit him. Except that he’d already handed my arse to me once.

‘Difference is I can probably do it.’

‘How?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, it’s not as easy as beating up Jakob, you know?’ Morag said.

‘Hey!’ But she ignored me.

‘Multiple plasma shots to the head.’

It could work, I supposed. We certainly hadn’t tried it, and if there was a small-arms solution that was probably the best bet. Except that Merle hadn’t watched Rolleston walk through railgun fire on Atlantis.

‘That it?’ I asked.

‘A tailored virus — the blades are the delivery device. A variant of Crom called Crom Dhu. Designed to kill people with Themtech bio-nanites in their system.’

‘You brought that here?’ Morag demanded incredulously.

‘You sure it does what they say it does?’ I asked. ‘We’ve had bad luck with that sort of thing in the past.’

‘I know they want Rolleston very, very dead.’

‘Cronin?’ I asked.

‘A luxury. They’re terrified of Rolleston.’

I looked at Cat and finally Pagan. Pagan had guilt written all over his face. I saw Morag glance over at him.

‘You need my brother. You try and hurt him, you’ve got me to deal with as well,’ Cat told us.

Tailgunner and Mother looked like that was okay with them. I looked at Morag. She didn’t look happy but she shrugged.

‘Get out of my sight,’ I told Merle.

He looked like he was about to say something but thought better of it. His contempt for us was written all over his face, however.

‘What?! We’re just letting him get away with it?’ Tailgunner demanded.

‘You want to kill him?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.’

Despite his anger and what he thought he was capable of at the moment, I was pretty sure that Tailgunner would struggle to murder in cold blood. Mother, on the other hand, I was less sure of. She put a hand on the big hacker’s shoulder.

‘Let it go,’ she told him.

Tailgunner looked like he was about to argue but lapsed into silence and stared at Merle’s back as he walked away from us.

I turned to Pagan. He was pale. Not frightened, but his guilt was palpable. Everyone else was staring at him as well now.

‘What did you do?’ Morag asked quietly.

‘I’m so sorry,’ was all he could manage.

‘Everyone’s sorry, Pagan. Just tell us what you did.’ I was getting angry now. Merle I could see. Fucking me over was just a job to him. After all he didn’t know me. Pagan, however, I’d fought by his side, supported his hare-brained schemes. I’d thought I could trust him. He’d betrayed us as well. It was written all over his face.

‘They told me to,’ he said miserably.

‘Who? Sharcroft? That prick tells you to do something and you just sell us down the river?’ I demanded.

‘Not Sharcroft and not us. Just you.’ At least he had the courtesy to look me straight in the lens when he said it. I felt something cold in my gut. That feeling I had that there was something slithering around us just out of sight, pulling our strings, manipulating us.

‘Who?’ Morag demanded.

Salem got there first. ‘Your gods?’

Pagan nodded miserably. Afterwards I would think that it was almost an involuntary reaction. I danced forward and jabbed at his face, felt my friend’s nose break under my knuckles, watched an old man hit the ground. Another old man interposed himself between me and Pagan’s prone form with surprising speed for someone in their eighties.

‘Please,’ Salem said.

Morag walked past us and spared me a glare before she knelt down next to Pagan. He had propped himself up against the foot of Kopuwai.

‘You sold me out because of a voice in your fucking head?!’ I demanded. I was leaning around Salem. I saw him wince as I swore.

‘They’re real. We know that now. You know that — you spoke to one of them.’ He was desperately trying to justify himself.

‘Do you know what they did to me in there?! What they showed me?! What they made me do?!’ I was shouting now. He flinched with every question. ‘And you sell me out so your friends in your head can make you feel special?!’

‘I thought you just spilled your guts and had some sex,’ Morag said acidly.

I tried to ignore the jibe even though it felt like she’d just stabbed me.

‘They’re not in my head — stop saying that!’ Pagan shouted.

‘Give me a good reason not to kill you, Pagan,’ I said.

‘Leave him alone,’ Morag said, glaring at me again. She turned back to Pagan. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

As I looked down at one bleeding old man, another in my way, I suddenly felt foolish and impotent. The anger drained out of me. I stepped away from them and Salem relaxed. As the anger left I started to feel the hurt of betrayal. It was an insight into how Morag must be feeling about me.

‘Ogham came to me,’ he started. Pagan had once told me that Ogham was the Celtic patron god of writing and brewing. Pagan identified with him as someone who wrote code. ‘He told me that Jakob had to be given to Demiurge.’

‘Why?’ I demanded.

‘I don’t know.’

‘But you fucking did it anyway?!’ I shouted. I felt like apologising to Salem for my swearing.

‘Let him answer,’ Morag told me coldly.

‘It had something to do with Pais Badarn Beisrydd.’

‘Oh this is bollocks,’ I spat.

‘No, no, it’s really not,’ Tailgunner said. ‘Miru’s eel net.’

Pagan was nodding.

‘We’re not just having visions now. We’re not just seeing things on the net that are very real to us despite a total lack of evidence,’ Salem said. ‘Now we’re being given artefacts, programs, pieces of code way in advance of what we can do, maybe as much as four or five generations ahead. Better than the best corp and military stuff. I saw a djinn in the net. She told me to come to you.’

‘A djinn?’ Pagan asked. ‘I though they were all evil.’

‘They are like people — some are good and some are bad. She told me that we cannot trust angels any more.’

There it was again. After all we’d done to break away from being manipulated by the likes of the Cabal, here we were dancing to someone, something else’s tune.

‘So what are they?’ I asked.

‘What they are not is figments of our imagination,’ Tailgunner growled.

‘Or fragments of God,’ Salem said. Tailgunner and Pagan turned sharply to look at him. ‘My faith does not come from the net. They are copies, not spirits. Though these copies may do God’s will.’

‘Which leaves either evolved AIs or aliens,’ I said. Everyone looked uncomfortable. I looked at Pagan. ‘And again I ask why?’

‘The way Ogham spoke suggested that he knew you would get out of there, would be you again. I think that’s why Nuada set up the cage-’

‘It was Nuada who imprisoned me?!’ I was angry again. It was Nuada who had let me hear myself torturing my friends.

Pagan looked up at me. ‘He protected you. Locked part of you, the most important part, away from Demiurge’s control. That’s why we were able to save you.’ Back was the hacker explaining to the technologically uninitiated what he felt was the obvious.

‘And again why?’ As I asked I remembered dreams of blackened glass, fire and a dark sun burning in the sky. The landscape had similarities with the net feed I’d seen in the Cabal’s Atlantis facility.

‘I don’t know. I need to look inside your head again,’ he told me.

‘Oh yeah, now the trust is so strong between us.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Tailgunner said.

‘You’ve already threatened me today.’

‘I’ll do it then,’ Morag said.

‘You tried to kill me!’

‘I will look,’ Salem said. ‘With Jakob’s permission.’

I looked at the calm old man. His weathered leathery features, the fissures in his skin. He was clothed like his icon and everything from those clothes to his calm demeanour seemed out of place here. Then something occurred to me.

‘Pagan, you said the only reason I was saved was because of what Nuada did.’ Morag and Pagan nodded. Both of them looked unhappy. ‘Rannu?’

Their expressions told me everything I needed to know. His screamed obscenities were still echoing through the cave. We’d lost another friend but they’d left us with a twisted mockery just to remind us.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pagan said miserably. He looked broken. It was why he’d gone for me before the exorcism, when I’d been savaging Morag — guilt. I couldn’t find it in myself to feel angry with him any more. I think he’d finally got what he wanted. He was a true priest now, a tool of the gods. I don’t think it was what he’d been expecting.

‘No,’ I said. Everyone turned to look at me. ‘We’re getting him back.’

‘It can’t be done,’ Pagan told me. I could see Salem and Tailgunner shaking their heads.

‘Jakob, listen. Normally I’d be the first to agree we should push this but seriously there’s no way,’ Morag told me. She was trying to control her voice, not show how upset she was about losing Rannu.

‘It reverses the interface, effectively. If meat can control hard- and software, then why not the other way? It’s the same principle as slaveware but Demiurge’s sophistication is such that it’s considerably more insidious, thorough and with none of the drop-off in motor skills. If anything, cognitive abilities increase, particularly if there is a connection to Demiurge proper,’ Salem explained.

This made a lot of sense. It didn’t matter how good their black propaganda was, how concrete their cover story, there was no way the fleet and ground commanders would have just handed over their forces to Rolleston and Cronin. They must have possessed certain key figures. This worried me. I knew what it was like, what Demiurge was like and how much it liked to cause pain. I didn’t like the idea of it possessing people who had so much power.

‘We were only able to get you out with Ogham’s help and because your core identity was kept safe by Nuada’s cage. Even then the tiny fragment of Demiurge managed to work out what we were doing.’

‘And that was code that neither Morag nor I was able to find when we checked,’ Pagan said. I took this in. Well at least I think I understood.

‘That’s my point. These things, these gods — if their stuff is so far in advance of us then they could help.’

I could see the four hackers sharing a poor-naive-non-hacker look.

‘That’s not the way it works,’ Tailgunner said uncomfortably.

‘No, I know. They play it all mysterious and you guys jump when they tell you to.’

Cat and Mother were starting to pay attention now.

‘Wait a second,’ Tailgunner said angrily.

‘No, he’s right,’ Pagan said.

‘Anyone still think they are actually your gods?’ I asked.

There were a lot of uncertain looks except from Salem.

‘They are echoes, copies, nothing more,’ he said.

‘Wait a second. You’re talking about our faith here!’ Tailgunner objected.

‘No. You either have faith or you do not. You’re talking about proof. Either you feel God or you do not. You will only feel God if you go looking, if you accept and embrace Him,’ Salem said.

‘Or Her,’ Morag added. ‘You’re saying that all we’re talking about is dealing with programs?’ Salem nodded.

‘That still doesn’t help us. They don’t do our bidding and they are too powerful to coerce,’ Tailgunner pointed out.

‘So you hope for their scraps? What they deign to give you?’ Mother demanded. Tailgunner looked like he’d just been slapped. ‘I’m sorry, but Jakob’s right. You think if that was you down there I wouldn’t trample heaven to get you fixed?’ Yeah, I liked Mother. I could see Cat nodding as well.

‘Fine,’ Tailgunner said. Clearly it really wasn’t. ‘But that doesn’t change the fact that whatever they are, they won’t do what we say. We can’t even really communicate with them. They come and go as it pleases them.’

‘So they can’t be contacted or summoned?’ I asked.

‘There are ritual programs,’ Pagan told me. ‘They are complex and difficult to write, time-consuming and more often than not they don’t work.’

‘Shit, that won’t work. They’ll let Demiurge in, won’t they?’ That was the end of my plan, to the obvious relief of Tailgunner, Salem and Morag. Then I saw Pagan’s face. Pagan should never, ever play poker.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Ogham appeared in an isolated system,’ he said.

‘That’s impossible,’ Tailgunner said.

‘Where’s your faith?’ I asked sarcastically and then wished I hadn’t said anything.

‘How?’ Cat asked.

‘You don’t really try and work these things out. It’s a religious experience,’ Pagan told her.

I couldn’t quite make out what she was muttering but I could tell she was less than pleased with this answer. It did have pretty serious repercussions for the whole what-are-these-things issue. It meant a transmitter, a very powerful one capable of breaking shielded systems. Suddenly I felt like looking behind me. Still it unfucked part of my plan. Then something else occurred to me.

‘How are you doing with reverse-engineering the eel net?’ I asked.

‘We can just about replicate a poor man’s version of it,’ Tailgunner told me.

I saw Pagan’s face fall. I think he realised what I was thinking.

‘You’re insane. You don’t fuck with these things — they’ll kill us on a whim,’ he said.

Morag was watching me with guarded interest.

‘Where’s your faith, Pagan? Is the cage gone? The code that Nuada put in me.’

Pagan nodded. ‘It’s served its purpose and they hate leaving traces of themselves. It will have gone.’

I turned to Salem. ‘Will you confirm that?’ He looked confused but nodded. I turned back to Pagan. ‘Do your ritual and tell Nuada this: if he does not turn up then I will re-expose myself to Demiurge.’ There was a storm of violent objections. Even Salem looked angry. Morag was the angriest. I let them rant at me for a while. ‘And this will be done before anyone has a look around inside my head.’

‘Then it’s all for nothing?’ Pagan asked angrily.

‘Only if they don’t show,’ I said. ‘And Pagan -’ he looked up at me ‘- I am not bluffing.’

‘You’re insane,’ he told me.

‘No, he’s not,’ Mother said.

‘Look, if there’s something in your head you could be throwing away our last chance, you selfish bastard!’ Morag shouted at me. It echoed around the cave.

Our mostly Maori audience had put their guns down some time ago but they were still watching the exchange. I rounded on Morag.

‘Don’t you tell me about throwing away chances — and have a good listen to Rannu before you try and stop me. I will kill anyone who tries to get anything out of my head before we’ve spoken to one of them.’

‘You can’t coerce them,’ Tailgunner started, sounding frustrated.

‘Fuck them,’ Cat said and then to me, ‘I got your back.’

‘She doesn’t even know Rannu,’ I said to Pagan and Morag.

‘You bastard,’ Morag said quietly, her eyes narrowing.

‘I agree. Jakob’s off limits until we’ve spoken to one of these things,’ Mother added. Tailgunner turned to her to object. ‘Don’t cross me on this,’ she told him.

Morag was right: this job was proving hard on relationships.

I was gambling that there was something in my head that Nuada and his friends wanted or they wanted us to have. I was threatening to destroy this. I hoped it was enough to at least get their attention.

So far the only good thing that had come out of this mess was that the heist had been a success. The Puppet Show had shown Mother’s people how to smuggle the goods down into the caves. We pretty much had enough food for the next month or so and more than enough ammunition for the foreseeable future. It was funny how weapons always seemed to end up the priority. How sometimes it can be easier to get an assault rifle than something to eat.

Salem had checked to see that Nuada’s cage had gone. It had. I had made him swear he would look no further. He argued with me but relented. I was pretty sure he was a man of his word but then I’d thought that of Pagan once. I liked the old guy. His presence was soothing, even if he did refuse to discuss whether or not he was one of the Immortals.

It was good to have Salem to speak to as the Maori contingent didn’t want to have much to do with me, and Merle, Pagan, Mudge and Morag were all avoiding me for different reasons. Pagan could barely even look at me and I wasn’t about to make it easy for him. I think he was setting up the summoning ritual/program largely out of guilt. Merle on the other hand didn’t seem to think he had anything to apologise for.

Rannu just kept screaming as long as he could. His voice was changing he was doing it so much damage, and there was only so much sedative we could afford to give him. I tried sitting with him, but very quickly he was probing for damage, looking for a way in, a way to cause pain, and it knew us well by now. I had to leave him.

‘You know we’re wasting time?’ I was sitting on a smooth boulder that broke the surface of the water, trying to refit the two claws that Rannu had been using as shanks. I was surprised to hear Morag’s voice but there was no emotion in it. I turned to look up at her. There was no emotion in her face either. She was wearing her heated inertial armour, a hat and scarf. Her breath misted in the cold, dark, deep cave.

‘Do you want to go somewhere and talk?’ I asked. I’d been dreading this, but we had to talk at some point and here everyone could see us. They would also hear the inevitable shouting echo throughout the cave.

‘We’ve got nothing to say to each other.’

That confused me a little bit.

‘So why are we talking?’

‘This is about the job. I know it takes a long time to mobilise a fleet and ground forces, but they’ve been at it for months and this whole thing is a waste of time.’

I couldn’t believe I was hearing this.

‘What about Rannu?’ I asked. ‘He supported you right from the beginning.’ After he’d kicked the shit out of me twice. ‘Have you even given any thought to his wife and kids?’

‘I think we need to focus-’

‘On what? You’re the great tactician, are you? So what do you want to do?’

‘Demiurge. The Citadel,’ she said quietly. She didn’t want to shout this through the cave.

‘How?’ I demanded. I could see that she was getting angry now.

‘Look, I want Rannu back as much as you, but we can’t force these things. I admit I don’t know how to go after Demiurge or the Citadel but the answer could be in your head.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Rannu first, then my head.’

‘Selfish bastard. It’s not just your friend at stake.’

‘No, he’s yours as well.’

‘At least let us look in your head.’ She was exasperated now.

‘Pagan sent you,’ I said matter-of-factly. After all, he was running the information side of things and he’d put me in harm’s way to get whatever was in my head, assuming there was anything in my head.

‘You think I wanted to come and speak to you myself?’ she hissed at me.

‘Look, I’m sorry-’

‘I don’t want to hear it. We need what’s in your head.’

‘No. I can’t take the risk that they’ll know, at which point I become expendable and the threat doesn’t work. When did you become so fucking ruthless?’

She looked as if I’d slapped her. ‘You’ve got no right to speak to me like that,’ she said coldly.

I took a deep breath, suddenly aware of how angry I’d become. I was struggling with how quickly Morag was able to sacrifice Rannu.

‘Do you think I don’t care?’ she demanded. As her anger subsided I could see how upset she was.

‘Morag, seriously, we need to talk,’ I said softly.

‘There is no we to talk about, Jakob.’

I don’t know what I was expecting. It still felt like a cold knife sliding between my ribs.

‘Of course there is. You wouldn’t keep on trying to kill me if you didn’t care about me.’ She just stared at me. ‘That came out wrong.’

‘You know, at least when you were possessed you told the truth.’ Then she stormed off.

That went well, I thought. I couldn’t even go looking for Mudge for drugs, booze and solace. He had his own problems. In fact, just about the only person who was talking to me, other than Salem, was Cat, and she never let me forget that she disapproved of my sleeping with the Grey Lady. She’d understandably taken Morag’s side in that.

It was the first time I’d seen Dinas Emrys from the outside. Although a library it looked like a huge fortress straddling the peaks of several mountains that rivalled, but didn’t surpass, the tallest peaks in the Highlands. The fort looked old. Older than even the tourist-haunted ruins of the castles I’d seen in Scotland as a child back when we’d lived in the park.

It was dark. The moon was full and closer than I remembered it being back home. Pagan had told me that Nuada had an affinity with the moon. Whatever. It was cold and a wind strong enough to tug at our icons’ clothes was blowing. The air smelled fresh and just a little thin. I was just pleased that it didn’t taste like greasy farts. I felt so light here away from my body and Lalande 2’s high G. This was good programming. I was revelling in the star-filled night sky after too long underground.

The circle was made up of poles. Each pole was tipped with a grisly skull. The weird thing was the skulls belonged to icons as diverse as dragons, bizarre aliens, even cartoon characters, down to relatively normal-looking human ones. Pagan assured me that all of them were trophies from other hackers he’d delivered a sound kicking to on the net for one reason or another. They almost sounded like his pride and joy. This was called a ghost fence and was the Pagan-flavoured voodoo he’d made with the reverse-engineered eel net that Tailgunner had given him. It was our optimistic containment program.

All the skulls looked into the centre of the circle at a huge bonfire. It was the only warmth out here, and the wood smoke smelled like the campfires I’d made as a child and during my recent foray into the Highlands. For a moment I thought about what it would be like to be in the Highlands now with a whisky in my hand and my real arm around a happy Morag. I glanced over at her. She was wearing her Black Annis icon. Unlike the room in virtual Jerusalem, both she and Pagan in his Druidic finery looked at home. Tailgunner, with his feathered cloak and bladed spear, looked less at home but he was holding his own.

Salem had asked not to take part in the ritual. It wasn’t really his thing. That was fine as we needed someone on the outside. Salem was watching this on a monitor hooked up to the solid-state memory cube. Pagan had copied Dinas Emrys onto the cube from his staff. I guessed he didn’t want these things in it.

Pagan lifted his hands to the night sky. Unusually for him, no lightning accompanied the gesture, but the wind picked up and rocked me back on my heels. It blew the flames of the bonfire around and whipped Pagan’s hair and beard about as he shouted into the wind. I hoped it was Pagan who was responsible for the wind and not Nuada.

‘I turn towards north, towards Findias, the shining silver fort, the fort of the mighty, the fort of the moon, the fort of spirits and bravery. Home to Nuada of the Silver Hand, first king of the Tuatha De Danaan, Lord of Victories, Lord of Conflicts, he who has power over force and strength.’

Go on, Pagan, I thought. See if you can get your nose all the way up there. He was really going for it now as the wind tore all around us.

‘Whose is the sword that none can run from, the sword that seeks flesh, the sword that cuts stone and metal,’ Pagan continued.

These old gods liked to hear how cool they were. I heard the cry of a bird of prey and looked into the night sky. I could just about make it out, a shadowed form against the dark blue of night. A night-hunting eagle was very unusual. The wind intensified and we were all being battered by it. I didn’t think this was Pagan’s special effects now.

‘Lord of Battles, Lord of Hosts, we beseech you attend us this night!’ Pagan screamed at the night sky.

We beseech you attend us this night? The arse-lickery was of course accompanied by some very complex code.

The wind seemed to blow out and then return to its earlier pre-ritual levels.

‘Well that was nice,’ I said.

All three of the hackers turned to glare at me.

‘The wind wasn’t mine,’ Pagan said as all three of them turned their back on the Luddite. ‘Neither was the eagle.’

‘Something definitely happened.’ Morag’s voice sounded like gravel being ground together. Tailgunner was nodding. I was trying to get closer to the fake heat of the fire.

‘It was a powerful ancestor to try and summon,’ Tailgunner said. I think he was trying to console Pagan.

‘Er, guys, is that supposed to be happening?’ I asked. In front of each of the severed-head-topped wooden poles, a ghostly figure was standing. They looked like the battered and bleeding owners of the original skulls. Some of them fitted with the surroundings, the cartoon cow less so.

‘The ghost fence,’ Pagan said.

‘There’s something in the fire,’ Tailgunner warned.

A figure seemed to gather the fire into itself. He looked like flame beneath taut-muscled black skin, the flame shining through complex spiral patterns, his mouth and his eyes. He reached into the moonlight and his hands came back full, holding the hilt of a moon-bladed sword. He wasn’t quite the same being I’d seen when Morag had taken me into Their mind. This time he looked angry, but the silver arm was there. Actually, ‘angry’ didn’t really cover what he looked like. Even ‘furious’ wasn’t adequate. Heat radiated from him, causing all of us to step back.

He swept his hand forward. The ghosts in the fence distorted and screamed like tortured souls but the fence did not break. Nuada seemed to be fighting to control himself. Taking long gasping breaths of smoke and fire.

‘You know I will break this and you are all forfeit,’ he finally said. Flames flickered over a mouth full of obsidian canines as he spoke. His voice was a bass rumble that sounded like it began somewhere south of hell.

‘Yeah, the question is, can you break it before I plug Rannu into the system? He has a fragment of Demiurge in him,’ I said.

Nuada reared up. Smoke and flame swirled and spiralled around him. To his credit he didn’t bother with the whole you-wouldn’t-dare speech. I could feel the power pouring off him even through the ghost fence. Whatever they were, they were not subtle in this electronic world. I had no doubts that given the chance my so-called patron would leave me a smoking corpse. He was communicating this with literally burning eyes. He didn’t need to bother with the threats. That said, the mention of Demiurge had a physiological effect on him: the name had seemed to ripple through flame, smoke and flesh. Was that what passed for fear with him?

‘What do you want?’ he finally rumbled.

‘I want you to free Rannu. Exorcise Demiurge or whatever you do; just bring my friend back.’

‘And if it’s not possible?’

‘Then whatever it was that’s in here -’ I tapped my head ‘- is lost when we plug Rannu into this system anyway.’

‘Your people have as much to lose as the Tuatha de Danaan if that happens,’ he told me. I glanced at Morag.

‘I’ve been told I’m a very selfish person, but you can do this, can’t you? It’s not a problem for you. You just don’t want to because it’s all one-sided with you guys. You want us to jump through hoops and then worship you for it, right?’

‘Do not speak to me like that. There is a threat… The Adversary is a corruption, a disease-’

‘Aren’t you the Lord of Hosts? The Lord of Battles? I’m smelling a lot of fear here.’

He narrowed his eyes at me. I held his stare. The worrying thing was, this guy struck me as the sort who held grudges. In the unlikely event that I lived, I suspected I needed to stay out of the net for the rest of my life. Perhaps it would be better to just avoid all electronics.

‘You are a fool, Jakob Douglas,’ he said, flames licking at his lips. ‘But you are not a coward. This is for nothing anyway. Your friend will likely die.’

‘Rannu’s tough,’ I said.

Nuada spared Pagan a look. Letting him know that he was as unhappy with the architect of his summoning and trapping as he was with me. Pagan looked away from him, refusing to meet his burning eyes.

‘Now, Salem,’ I said. On the quiet, Tailgunner and Morag set subtle and stealthy diagnostic and analytical programs running.

It was like a rent in the sky, a smoking black fissure, as Salem connected the solid-state memory cube with the copy of Dinas Emrys in it to one of Rannu’s plugs. Nuada held his huge sword up into the beam of light from the moon. The sword acted like a prism of silver fire. It was bright, so bright, like ground zero, like Balor lifting his patch. We all became silhouettes just before the dark of blindness. The last thing I saw was silver fire, then nothing. All I could hear was Rannu, not the beast inside him, but Rannu. He was screaming in agony.

Burning. Bright light but not as bright, almost a relief after where I’d come from. The plug in the back of my neck was cooking the flesh surrounding it. I saw smoke drifting up past me. The rock felt cool beneath me. I was lying on the stone floor looking up at the ceiling of the small cave Rannu was in. Even in the sulphurous atmosphere it stank of bodily fluids, stale sweat and a body turning rancid and rotten.

But Rannu wasn’t screaming. I could hear other people shouting. I sat up. Morag was gripping the back of her neck, smoke drifting through her fingers. Tailgunner and Pagan were sitting up as well. The solid-state memory cube that had contained the copy of Dinas Emrys had melted and was letting off acrid black smoke.

On the cot I could see Rannu’s emaciated, ravaged body. His corpse. He was clearly dead. Merle and Cat were trying to change that. Smoke was pouring from all four of Rannu’s plugs.

I staggered to my feet still holding my neck and watched Cat ram a stim straight into Rannu’s heart. Merle then shocked him again and again. It looked merciless to my eyes. Rannu would live. He had to. This couldn’t have been for nothing. I couldn’t have put us all at risk for no reason. Besides, he was a tough bastard.

Rannu spasmed, his back arched and he threw himself around in his cot. I sank to my knees.

‘His heart’s beating,’ Cat said, sounding relieved.

‘He’s breathing,’ Merle said, matter of fact.

I felt someone hugging me. I looked down to see Morag. She looked up at me, so happy, and then like night falling she remembered what I’d done to her and pushed away. Even that didn’t affect how happy I was to see Rannu back. I turned around to see Mudge leaning against the cave mouth smoking a spliff and grinning.