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.
War in Heaven Page 47