War in Heaven

by Gavin G. Smith

  ‘It doesn’t seem right,’ I said. Pagan nodded. The language, the briefing, it was going to war with the environment. We needed our moments of fantasy. ‘And that’s it,’ I said with finality. They all looked at me expectantly.

  ‘I’ll bite. What’s it?’ Mudge finally asked.

  ‘From now on we’re not trying to piss each other off. We’re not trying to score points.’ I looked over at Merle. ‘We don’t need the strong silent hard men—’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Morag and Mudge said in unison.

  I bit down the flash of irritation and jealousy. She had more than the right to try and make me feel that way.

  ‘If we don’t stop trying to pull each other apart then I will sabotage the OILO cocoons myself and we’ll sit out the war. Okay?’

  ‘Plus you won’t have to make the jump?’ Pagan said, but he was smiling.

  I nodded.

  ‘No offence, man, but you’re part of the problem,’ Cat said. I glanced over at Morag, or rather the Maiden of Flowers that Morag was wearing. She was studiously looking elsewhere.

  ‘I think we all are, but you’re right. It’s not going to get in the way. We’ll either deal with it or ignore it effectively, or the mission won’t be happening at all.’

  The Maiden of Flowers’ head snapped round to look at me. I thought she was about to argue. Maybe it sounded too much like I was making decisions for her, which people had been doing all her life. All I thought I was doing was stating our only two real options for the situation we were in. I think she reached that conclusion as well and nodded.

  ‘This soap opera’s a joke, right?’ Merle asked.

  ‘You can pack that in as well. I realise you don’t know us so you’ve got to wipe your cock in our faces so we know you’re not a victim. We get it. You’re hard core, so you can stop now. Also any problems you have with your sister, resolve them or leave them until after.’

  He stared at me, but his icon was off the shelf and it didn’t have the same effect that being stared at by his weirdly intense brown eye implants would have had.

  ‘This mission being scrubbed is not the problem for me that it is for you,’ he told us.

  ‘Fine. Either you’re in or out. You’re out, you can rattle around in here until we’re finished.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Merle said. Pagan’s icon seemed to twitch. ‘You’d put a bullet in my head.’

  ‘Compelling reasons. If you’re in, you play nicely.’

  He gave what I’d said some thought and then nodded. The guy was a prima donna, I decided. He was too used to doing ops on his own.

  ‘Anyone who has a problem with Mudge’s pharmaceutical recreations can mind their own business,’ I said.

  Mudge grinned but Cat and Pagan protested.

  I continued, ‘Mudge, your hobby gets in the way, you run out and have a nasty withdrawal, or for whatever reason can’t keep up then you get left behind. If it’s a dodgy situation and it looks like you’ll get compromised I’ll shoot you myself.’

  ‘You are so masterful,’ Mudge said acidly.

  I could tell he was about to go off on me. Come on, Mudge, I urged silently. You’re not stupid. You know I’ve faith in you. This has to be said. This is for the audience. I watched Mudge’s icon swallow. Morag’s programming was superb. I was betting that the tranced-in Mudge had done that back in the meat world. Mudge seemed to master his anger and nodded.

  ‘While we’re on the subject, what were you doing back in Trace’s office?’ I asked.

  ‘What? The guy was an arsehole?’ Mudge said.

  ‘So? We’ve met arseholes before.’

  ‘And I always deal with them like that.’ He was sounding defensive now.

  ‘You almost got us killed,’ Cat said angrily before turning to me. ‘And this is the point. I’m sure he’s a party guy but the drugs in his system compel him to make bad decisions, make him overconfident.’

  ‘That’s really not the drugs,’ I told her. It was meant to be flippant but in retrospect who knew? It was impossible to separate who Mudge was from the drugs. I’d only ever seen him straight once. That was in Maw City and he’d been sick from withdrawal.

  ‘Sometimes you’ve just got to shit in your hand and throw it at them,’ Mudge said. We all turned to look at him. He shrugged. ‘It turned out all right.’

  I was starting to get angry now. ‘It turned out all right because Morag was seriously on the ball. Everything we knew about the situation suggested that hacking their systems wasn’t an option. If she hadn’t noticed—’

  ‘And pulled off the greatest hack ever,’ Cat said.

  ‘Then we would have been dead,’ I finished.

  ‘We’ve all got to go sometime. If you’re scared then get another line of work,’ Mudge said.

  Tried that, I thought.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mudge. We’ll get fucking killed soon enough but let’s at least try first, okay?’ I said angrily.

  ‘Good speech – raises the morale,’ Merle said dryly.

  ‘And when did you start arguing with me when we’re in the middle of a job?!’ I demanded, thinking back to the brothel.

  ‘You left me behind!’ Mudge shouted. I think that had really hurt him. ‘I don’t have to do what you say – we’re not in the army now!’

  ‘You never were!’ I shouted back at him.

  ‘So much for our mountain idyll,’ Pagan muttered.

  ‘Whatever it is, rein it in,’ I told Mudge. ‘Because I mean it: if you endanger this mission, you endanger the rest of us.’

  ‘What, you’ll shoot me? You are so fucking butch right now,’ he spat.

  ‘If you can’t convince me that you’re not a liability then I’ll leave you behind,’ I told him evenly.

  Morag’s programming was superb. It picked up on just how hurt Mudge was.

  ‘Fucking whatever. I’m good. I’ll play nicely with the other children.’ He was all but sulking. He was pissed off and defensive because I think he knew that we were right.

  ‘These are just words,’ Merle said, testing the boundaries.

  ‘The only person in this room I’m not sure will live up to their words is you,’ I told him, met his look and held it. It was difficult to outstare a cheap icon as they weren’t sophisticated enough to blink.

  ‘So, macho posturing aside, what are we doing out here?’ Cat asked. She provided the distraction for both of us to look away with a degree of dignity. So I told myself.

  ‘Operation Ungentlemanly Warfare,’ Pagan said.

  ‘We have a name, how exciting,’ Mudge said. I glared at him. ‘Oh lighten up.’

  ‘Ungentlemanly is the information part of the operation run by me. Warfare is the physical security element run by Jakob.’

  ‘What’s our objective?’ Merle asked. I was pleased that he said ‘our’.

  ‘Twofold. First Morag and I want to hack Demiurge. We need to do that without being noticed. We need to do it to find the plans for the attack on the Sol system and we also need to find a way to defeat Demiurge.’

  ‘Can you even do that yet?’ Cat asked. ‘I thought Demiurge was like God, only worse.’

  Pagan was looking evasive.

  ‘Don’t piss about, Pagan,’ I told him.

  ‘Not yet. We have a few advantages and some avenues of research we’re following up,’ he said. I hoped they had something a bit more concrete than that Pais Badarn Beisrydd bullshit.

  ‘So let’s say you somehow manage to hack this scary AI …’ Merle began.

  ‘Its not an AI—’ Morag started.

  ‘So what?’ Merle cut across her.

  We all stared at him, except Pagan.

  ‘You mean, what do we do with the information?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, I can see we infiltrate with OILO, which might not be as easy as you think, but what’s your exit strategy?’

  ‘We don’t have one,’ Pagan told him.

  ‘Then you’re wasting your time,’ Merle said.

  ‘Nuik
o has been paid to stay in proximity to Lalande 2 while we’re planetside. She’ll be at certain orbits at certain times for the first three weeks. Morag and myself will have the co-ordinates and the times. When we get the information we need—’

  ‘If,’ Merle interrupted again.

  ‘Then we use a tight beam uplink to transmit data packets to the Tetsuo Chou.’

  That made sense. Unless the Black Squadrons could directly transpose something between the uplink transmitter and the Tetsuo Chou then they had no way of intercepting the information. Presumably three weeks was a function of the clipper’s logistics.

  ‘And if we don’t manage this in the first three weeks?’ I asked.

  ‘Then it’s a seventeen-day round trip plus another day for outfitting before she returns for another three weeks. That’ll be her last trip,’ Pagan told us.

  ‘If she’s not intercepted,’ Merle said.

  ‘Her risks are no different from ours,’ I said.

  I noticed that Pagan looked troubled.

  ‘Except that she’s a spaceship!’ Mudge cried with mock enthusiasm, his apparent new leaf now at an end.

  ‘Exfiltration?’ Merle asked.

  ‘No such thing,’ I told him. ‘Either the war ends and we get to go home, or we wait for some as yet unforeseen opportunity.’

  ‘And?’ Mudge suddenly asked.

  Pagan looked confused. ‘And what?’

  ‘And Rolleston and Cronin?’

  ‘Demiurge is our main priority,’ Pagan replied.

  ‘We go after them if the opportunity presents itself,’ I said.

  ‘They’re not a priority?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘They’ve got a number of planets and a lot of space they could hide in,’ Cat said.

  ‘Vicar seemed to think that there was a good chance they’re on Lalande 2, some place called the Citadel,’ I told them. Because its where Satan has his throne, whatever that meant.

  ‘There’s maybe a slightly higher chance than good that they are on Lalande 2,’ Pagan said. Glyphs shimmered in the air in front of him and a holographic display came to life showing a three-dimensional pictographic representation of a lot of information.

  ‘What’s all that?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘Its all the info in Limbo,’ Pagan said. ‘I stole it. It was weird, almost like Sharcroft had forgot he’d employed hackers. And yes, Mudge, if we live then you can have it all. Though I’m going to find a way to get God into their secure network.’

  Mudge and I stared at him. Morag was just smiling. I could tell Pagan was pleased with himself but trying to appear nonchalant.

  ‘This is all the information on the Cabal and the Squadrons?’ I asked, suddenly feeling a little more optimistic.

  ‘All that wasn’t purged,’ Pagan said. He brought one file to the fore and seemed to explode it. Text info scrawled down the holographic display, as did a series of architectural schematics that formed a three-dimensional model of what seemed to be a heavily fortified building. It looked a little like a small-scale military arcology.

  ‘That can’t be right,’ I said. ‘It’s made of ice.’

  ‘Lalande ice,’ Merle said. ‘The pressures exerted on it make it very dense. It’s harder than reinforced concrete. It’s a bitch to cut, even with industrial lasers. That’s the Citadel,’ he said. Pagan was nodding.

  ‘Chewed out of one of the salt-acid glaciers with microbes. It’s in the New Zealand settlement zone of the Twilight Strip, obviously close to Nightside. Despite being in New Zealand territory and despite there officially being no British presence on Lalande, this is a joint Defence Evaluation and Research Agency and CIA Directorate of Science and Technology operation.’

  I wasn’t sure I was following Pagan.

  ‘So?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘It’s a Cabal front,’ Merle said.

  Now we were all looking at him.

  ‘You knew?’ Morag asked.

  Merle shrugged. ‘Just putting the dots together.’

  ‘He’s right. According to Sharcroft, the Cabal, which didn’t even really seem to think of itself as a conspiracy, preferred to be as decentralised as possible. Most of their meetings were virtual and took place in highly secure sanctums. After the Atlantis base the Citadel was their main facility. It was their largest and it ran Themtech research. In fact it had been doing this before the Atlantis facility because they had wanted somewhere secure and off the beaten track,’ Pagan told us.

  ‘It’s not that far from Moa City,’ Merle said. He was sounding more interested despite himself. ‘But that place is hard, man. I mean the security’s some of the heaviest I’ve ever seen. I had some serious clearance but I never got very far inside. If you’re going in there then you’d best have a good reason.’

  ‘What sort of research?’ I asked. I found myself suddenly angry. I think Pagan realised that.

  ‘Them biotech, maybe some transgenic,’ he said. His icon wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘Transgenic? Hybridisation?’

  He shrugged. ‘Yes, on animals.’

  ‘On people?’ I demanded. I was angry but not at Pagan. Pagan nodded.

  ‘Does that mean more people like Gregor?’ Morag asked. I think she sounded a little afraid.

  ‘Potentially a lot more,’ Pagan said. ‘But earlier proto-versions.’

  ‘That’s reassuring,’ Mudge said.

  ‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ Pagan said. He was right. ‘Besides, I don’t think they’ll be as formidable as the current iteration. You know, the ones like Rolleston.’

  He was also right about that. If they were all like Rolleston then I wasn’t even sure how we were going to kill them. There was some muttering.

  ‘We got a reason to go in there?’ Merle asked. He was trying to nod at the image of the Citadel but I don’t think his icon was co-operating.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pagan said. ‘There’s evidence –’ he brought up some more information that looked like computer system schematics ‘– of an internal sub-system which the truly paranoid could use to hide information and develop plans.’

  ‘So you have to get in and out of that without being noticed and hack an unhackable AI? Seems simple,’ Merle said.

  ‘We’re going to try and find an easier way.’ Pagan sounded a little exasperated.

  ‘We’ve done really stupid things before,’ Mudge said.

  ‘I know. I saw the highlights. Look, it sounds like we could spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for you guys to develop software.’

  I shook my head. ‘If it’s not going our way then we’ve got a whole list of secondary objectives we can go for depending on the situation on the ground.’

  ‘Under it,’ Cat said. Nobody lived on the surface in Lalande.

  ‘Intelligence-gathering, getting the truth out, assassination and sabotage, which is what Sharcroft thinks we’re doing,’ said Pagan.

  ‘He doesn’t know?’ I asked.

  ‘About wanting to hack Demiurge? He might guess we want to, but he doesn’t know that we may be close to it being a realistic option.’

  ‘He just thinks we’ll be causing trouble? Going after their infrastructure?’ Merle asked.

  ‘But that means killing a lot of innocent people,’ I said, meaning all the people who would quite reasonably have been taken in by the Squadrons’ versions of events. I thought back to Vladimir.

  ‘Can’t we shoot to wound?’ Morag said weakly. The others looked uncomfortable. It wasn’t an option and I think she knew it. You shoot someone, especially someone augmented, you had to make sure they were dead or they were just going to get up and shoot you back.

  ‘You’d all best come to terms with killing anyone who gets in our way,’ Merle said. ‘Otherwise you’ll get us killed.’

  ‘We’ll do it, but we don’t have to like it,’ I said.

  It was the same as any other human war, I guessed. People who never reached the front line made the decisions and got people like us to go and kill each other.
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  ‘If we go after the infrastructure,’ Pagan continued, ‘the Citadel would be a valid target.’

  ‘Why?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘Because if it’s a biotech facility it could be used to augment more of the Squadron’s people to become like Rolleston,’ I told him.

  ‘Hitting that place will not be easy,’ Merle said somewhat redundantly.

  ‘Harder than making whipped cream by sitting in a giant bowl of milk with a whisk up your arse?’ Mudge asked.

  I turned to stare at him, Merle ignored him and Pagan just sighed.

  ‘Also we should try and link with resistance fighters if there are any …’ the ageing hacker said, trying to continue.

  ‘There will be,’ Merle said.

  ‘The Black Squadrons will tell them we’re the bad guys,’ Morag pointed out.

  ‘You don’t know these people. I’ve dealt with the Cabal, though I didn’t know it then. The whole reason they do what they do is because they’re control freaks. They may control the info but they’ll try to push people around. Those people, especially in the New Zealand settled zones, will push back.’ What Merle was telling us was thin but it was also the closest thing we’d heard to good news throughout this briefing. ‘A lot of this seems to be make-it-up-as-we-go-along-once-we-hit-the-ground.’

  ‘We’re jumping blind. Never been in the army?’ I asked.

  ‘Marines and air force mainly.’

  ‘Rannu’ll tell us more when we meet. Rendezvous with him,’ Morag said. I hoped that would happen as well but it sounded naive even to my ears.

  ‘That’s pretty risky, Morag,’ Cat said. Pagan had set up rendezvous points and times with Rannu. ‘It looks like a lot of the initial missions were compromised.’

  ‘Maybe, but Rannu’s good,’ Morag said, trying to keep the hope out of her voice.

  ‘We check,’ I said. We owed him that. I owed him that. I’d left Gregor too long. Merle and Cat protested. ‘Carefully,’ I added.

  ‘You’ve done a lot of questioning, Cabal-boy,’ Mudge said. ‘What are you bringing?’

  Merle managed to turn his shit icon’s head and stare at him for a while. Then the icon smiled. It looked more like a grimace.

  ‘Oh I’m the native guide. I know the land. A large network of contacts, many of whom will have been compromised, some of whom I just can’t see co-operating, but if they’ve been slaved then who knows.’