‘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 m
echanisms 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.
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