Veteran

by Gavin Smith

  ‘Air Marshal Kaaria, you do not have the authority to countermand that order. Begin firing now,’ Rolleston said. Kaaria’s image turned somewhat, presumably to face the screen that was showing him Rolleston. Rolleston was messing with the hilt of a skull fucker, a vicious old commando dagger designed to penetrate the skull. Despite its age, wielded with enough power it could still make a mess of even a military-grade cyborg.

  ‘Leaving aside the fact that I will not be ordered around by a mere Major—’

  ‘My rank is not indicative of my authority—’ Rolleston began.

  ‘I will not be interrupted! Major, do you think I am insane? Do you think that Kenya wants to be responsible for starting another full-scale, inter-human conflict? Do you not think that we haven’t seen the footage of what happened to the Brazilian Spoke and what happened to America afterwards? In short, do you think we’re out of our minds?’ Rolleston didn’t answer. Mudge and the others looked relieved.

  ‘Look,’ I said, and was less than pleased to see my face fill the screen. ‘You want us, we’ll surrender peacefully. There’s no need to kill tens of thousands of people. Nobody wants that and we’ve already done what we need to.’

  Gregor was glaring at me.

  I headed over to him. ‘It’s all right, we’ll get you out of here,’ I said.

  ‘How?’ he asked, unconvinced.

  ‘Okay, we’re probably all going to die. Feel better?’

  ‘A little.’ I saw that Watch Commander Sommerjay’s comms icon was flashing. I opened the channel.

  ‘I’m a little busy, Cat,’ I said as pleasantly as I could. She didn’t bother with pleasantries.

  ‘Surrender to us.’ I gave this some thought. In many ways it was a seductive idea.

  ‘Under normal circumstances—’ all the other times I take over part of a Spoke and release an artificial god into the net ‘—I would, but you’d still have to hand us over to Rolleston. Not going to happen. We know him too well.’ Cat seemed to give this some thought.

  ‘You want help?’ she asked. Bang, that was her career over. I wondered how many other people were going to get hurt before this finished. Yes, I did want help but I knew she couldn’t give it.

  ‘You know they’re probably listening?’ She didn’t say anything. ‘Look, thanks, but we’d just get in each other’s way, right?’ She nodded. ‘The best thing you could do is stay out of it.’ Behind me Rolleston and Mudge were still arguing on the viz.

  ‘I’m standing my people down. Good luck, Sergeant,’ Cat said. Hopefully none of her people would get hurt. Briefly I hoped that Rolleston and the Grey Lady wouldn’t try a two-person breach. After all we had Gregor and Balor in here; Rannu was capable as well. But I knew they would.

  ‘Mr Mudgie, you have just released a Them virus into the net, why on Earth should anyone believe what you say?’ Rolleston was asking as I returned my attention to the show.

  ‘God, are you a Them virus?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘No, Howard, I am not. My programming is almost entirely human, as are the parameters that have been set within which I can act. The operating system I use is based round technology derived from Them but that was purely in terms of information management.’

  ‘So by your admission you are part Them,’ Rolleston said.

  ‘You are choosing to focus on that part of my creation in an attempt to force a fallacious point, I believe,’ God said.

  ‘Everything about God is transparent,’ Pagan began, speaking with the sort of exasperation the technically skilled have for those who are less gifted. ‘We would encourage people to check our proof that God is not—’

  ‘This "proof" comes from one source, the source that has the most to gain from us believing it. It’s hardly objective,’ Rolleston interrupted.

  ‘I was designed to be objective,’ God countered.

  ‘So you say, and even if you are, you were still designed to be objective by subjective people,’ Rolleston said.

  ‘This argument could just go in circles,’ Mudge said, sounding bored.

  ‘Fine,’ Rolleston said with a degree of satisfaction. ‘I’m no signalman but as far as I know we do not have AI.’

  ‘Nor do They. What you think is AI is actual sentience. I am the sum of your culture: I have learnt and developed as human sentience did, albeit much faster.’

  ‘So you have no trace of your Them origins?’ Rolleston demanded. He was still readying gear on the assault shuttle, working quickly but without hurry. Bran was a study in the economy of movement.

  ‘Yes, I have maintained enough of Ambassador to behave in total cooperation with all my constituent parts and to reject duplicity as an alien concept. There is only one, that is I, and so I cannot lie.’

  ‘I see, so the Them part of you is the good part?’ Rolleston said.

  ‘That is your value judgement of what I said,’ God answered. ‘My constituent parts, the ones that I believe you would consider to be more important, are more human than not.’

  ‘So you say, and while a lack of duplicity is admirable in those who can afford it, what about what your people have done to the colonies? Murdered non-combatants, including children, mutilated them. Is it not true that you have exterminated humanity wherever you have found it?’ Rolleston asked, as he finished attaching a man-portable plasma weapon to his subsonic Spectre gauss carbine, creating an over/under combination weapon.

  ‘Of course They hit non-combatants,’ Gregor said, and suddenly his warped alien features were up on the screen. It occurred to me that this might not do us any good.

  ‘Yes, you would have insights, wouldn’t you, Mr MacDonald, being as you are part alien?’ Rolleston said sarcastically. ‘So please explain how They are actually little, misunderstood kitten-like creatures, and the sixty years of Them murdering humanity wherever They found them, men women and children, didn’t actually happen.’

  ‘They never knew war before the Cabal—’

  ‘There is no such thing as the Cabal!’ Rolleston said, angry again.

  ‘Before your people,’ Gregor continued, ‘ordered their habitation attacked. Their sense of self is different: each cell is an individual that forms their whole so for them it was genocide. Because they had no understanding of what was happening the only response they knew was the one we had taught them, all-out attack. How were they to know that we put arbitrary rules on conflict? Rules that we ourselves have often failed to enforce in the past. In a fight for survival they felt they had to do everything they could to win. It’s what you taught us,’ Gregor said. Then there was silence as what he had just said sank in. Rolleston was smiling.

  ‘Major, do you deny that you attempted to destroy every peaceful emissary from Them?’ Mudge asked. He was trying to take the attention away from Gregor’s admission, even though he was still looking at the hybrid.

  On the screen, footage that God had compiled, presumably requested by Mudge, started playing. We saw craft similar to the kind Ambassador had shown me back in Vicar’s church what seemed like an age ago. As before, it was basically a disposable engine with lots of needle-shaped stealth re-entry pods. We watched as orbital defences and ships destroyed craft after craft of this type. Each piece of footage was accompanied by a recording of the encrypted orders and each of those was sourced to members of the Cabal. There were so many ships.

  Then the footage changed. On screens all over the system we saw Them, like Ambassador, being executed. It happened in city streets, in the wilderness, in the sea. There were only a few of these executions but I recognised the killers, or at least what they were. Ex-special forces. This was what the XIs were set up to do: ensure that there was no chance of peace.

  Finally God showed us footage of a wealthy family with their own yacht. They were presumably upper-echelon execs for some corp. The family was perfectly nuclear, one mum, one dad and two children. They were gathered round an alien that looked just like Ambassador.

  All the members of the family had the same beatific expr
essions on their faces that Morag and the other hookers had had when I found them sheltering Ambassador. There was a bright light and a loud noise, the picture turned to static and then slowly returned. I recognised the effects of a multi-spectrum stun grenade. There was the sound of suppressed weapon fire. The alien was down. We saw a gunman walk into the cabin and calmly double-tap each member of the family. The next shot was from the water and we could see the yacht burning. The gunman was in the water, watching the burning yacht and waiting for pickup. The big screen split to show the encrypted comms communication.

  ‘Targets eliminated?’ Rolleston asked over the comms.

  ‘I murdered them all,’ Rannu answered. Even through the medium of the comms line I could hear the remorse. All of us were looking up at where Rannu was sat on the catwalk above. His face appeared on the screen as Mudge did a close-up on him.

  ‘That’s how I knew she was right,’ Rannu said.

  ‘So how is showing one of your people murdering a family supposed to prove anything?’ Rolleston asked.

  ‘Because we’ve demonstrated you ordered it,’ Mudge snarled.

  ‘"We’ve demonstrated"?’ Rolleston asked. ‘You’re one with God now, are you?’

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ Mudge said.

  ‘What subject, Howard?’ Rolleston asked scornfully. ‘This is all very clever. Shame really. Had you spent this amount of time and energy trying to help humanity instead of engaging in wild flights of ego and vanity that will ultimately make us more vulnerable, you may have helped end the war. Let’s start with a few obvious things. I have done and ordered done a lot of horrible things. That is my job, and although I rarely have to justify it to myself in this way I guess I do it for the sake of humanity I watched Bran tuck both her pistols into holsters on her thighs. She picked up her laser carbine and was perfectly still. I knew she’d be calibrating the smartgun and running through the weapons diagnostics.

  ‘Oh come on,’ Mudge scoffed. ‘You’re an evil little prick who likes having power over others.’

  ‘No!’ Rolleston said. He’d finished readying his load. He stood up, talking directly into the lens that was recording him. ‘See, this is the problem with petty-minded individuals like you. Things aren’t right so you want to destroy everything, tear it down, find someone to blame without thinking about what comes next. We’re trying to build something, and because it requires sacrifice you want to whine about it and lash out. You make me sick.’

  ‘Build what?’ I asked quietly. Rolleston ignored me.

  ‘Well, guess what? All you are is a dupe. Did I order that family killed? Of course I did. Did I order all of Them killed? Yes. Why? Because they’re the enemy! Sixty years of warfare, humans wiped out wherever They found them, remember? What you call Ambassadors, you ignorant wretch, are what sane people call infiltrators.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Morag shouted as she made her entrance onto system-wide media.

  ‘What is?’ Rolleston asked. ‘I’m sorry that family died. I’m sorry the other prostitutes that you worked with died when you abandoned them, but did you see their faces? They were being mind-controlled by Them, just as you have been.’

  ‘You know that’s not true,’ Morag said more quietly. I think she’d just got a glimpse of herself on the screen.

  ‘Really? Deny you don’t have a fragment of one of Them in your head?’ he demanded. Morag opened her mouth and then closed it again. ‘Nothing to say? This is very well done, but at the end of the day you have shown us nothing that couldn’t be fabricated. Yes, there are things here that have an element of truth, but all the best lies do. After all, we only have God’s assurance that it isn’t lying.’ He turned to Josephine. ‘Ready?’ She nodded.

  I texted a query on their location to God. As I did, Rolleston cocked his head and smiled. He’d intercepted my communication. I received an answering text from Rolleston himself. I didn’t open it. God told me that Rolleston’s assault shuttle was about to land two floors above us. I looked around the node. Rannu looked as impassive as ever. He nodded to me from his position on the catwalk. Balor was leaning against the wall near the docking arm. He looked bored. I managed to get Buck and Gibby’s attention and signalled that violence was imminent. I moved over to where Pagan and Morag were.

  ‘They’re nearly here,’ I said. Pagan nodded grimly. Morag looked scared.

  ‘You did it,’ I said to them both. Morag managed a weak smile.

  I tried to signal Mudge, but he was too busy arguing with Rolleston, or rather trying to convince the rest of the system that Rolleston was the bad guy here.

  ‘We can’t fake that amount of evidence,’ Mudge said.

  ‘You have unlimited processing power, and this is all mediated, so why not?’ Rolleston replied.

  ‘So nothing is real?’ Pagan asked.

  ‘I’m saying this obviously isn’t. It’s a complex and very well done illusion. Because, as we all know, the truth is nowhere as simple a creature as you would like it to be and it is always subjective. So all we are getting is what you want people to see Corporal Simm.’ It took me a moment to realise that Simm was Pagan’s real name.

  ‘Those are pretty words, Major,’ Pagan said. ‘We’ve tried to make everything as open, transparent and objective as we were able. Yes, there may be subjectivity, but that’s better than the lies that you and your Cabal have been telling us for years. I mean why are we wrong, despite having evidence, and you right, because you say so? That doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘You’ve already admitted to having nearly infinite processing power. What was your aim, Corporal Simm? To make God omnipotent in the net?’ Rolleston asked.

  Pagan went quiet for a few beats as the realisation hit him, and then said, ‘You knew.’

  ‘You were compromised by GCHQ and the NSA. Since we’re being so truthful, are you going to answer the question?’ Rolleston said.

  I knew at this moment the rest of Pagan’s co-programmers were using God to find out who’d compromised them, and if the opportunity was available deal with them. Hackers had a well-developed sense of revenge.

  ‘Yes, that was our aim,’ Pagan finally answered.

  ‘So, basically anything’s possible with your alien program?’ Rolleston asked.

  ‘In theory, but I would invite hackers everywhere, government or otherwise, to examine God.’

  It would still be mediated and you have the power,’ Rolleston pointed out.

  Something occurred to me. ‘If you knew about them and you knew they had the power to create something this dangerous—’

  ‘So you admit it’s dangerous?’ Rolleston asked.

  ‘Why didn’t you shut it down?’ I continued.

  Had I been, in-system I would have, but Simm and his little conspiracy weren’t compromised by the infiltrator when I left, so as far as we were concerned they were just a group of arrogant and deluded hacker has-beens. It took their collusion with one of the enemy, their treason, for them to become dangerous. What? You think They are incapable of subtlety? You think They don’t have intelligence, psyops, information warfare? Just how naive are you people exactly?’

  ‘You were stealing their work and using it to help develop Demiurge,’ Gregor said. This time Mudge decided not to put his hybrid features up on the screen.

  ‘No ...’ Pagan moaned and sat down at the bottom of the steps leading to the catwalk.

  ‘I feel that you should all be aware that Major Rolleston and Private Bran have landed,’ God said helpfully. I came off the wall where I’d been leaning.

  ‘See you soon, Jakob,’ Rolleston said. His image blinked off. Why’d he single me out? I thought irrationally.

  ‘God, can you get him back up?’ I asked, all business now. In answer God brought up an image from a landing-pad lens two floors above us. We watched the docking arm reach out to the sleek and violent-looking, next-generation assault shuttle.

  God cut to the security lens in the docking arm. The Major and the Grey Lady
striding down the corridor. Josephine put her laser carbine to her shoulder and the picture disappeared. Cut to another lens and the same thing happened. It seemed that the Major and the Grey Lady had had quite enough publicity for one day.

  As Mudge continued presenting the machinations, as he called them, of the Cabal system-wide, I followed the progress of the Major and Bran. They systematically destroyed or jammed every comms and surveillance device they found as they made their way down to Cat’s security people on the other side of what now felt like a very thin security shield.

  They killed the crawlers we’d sent out, destroyed lenses and finally set up a white-noise transmitter. The last image we had of them was of Rolleston arguing with Cat while her people watched. They looked ready to step in if it got nasty. Josephine was just looking at the security screen covering the front of the node. Somehow it felt like she was looking through the lens and through me. Again I felt fear above and beyond the anticipation of combat.

  27

  Atlantis

  ‘Sergeant MacDonald?’ The voice was American, northern states. It sounded like someone was trying to spread a veneer of culture and corporate elocution lessons over street roots. I saw Gregor turn to look up at the viz screen; even on his warped features the look of disgust was unmistakeable. On the screen was a handsome, well-groomed young man in an immaculate understated suit that screamed upper-echelon corp. The giveaway was the sheathed antique katana held casually in his left hand.

  Everything about his appearance was perfect, from his hair to the duelling scars. God was providing a biography for this guy. I downloaded it onto my internal visual display but still only managed to catch the highlights. His name was Vincent Cronin. He’d grown up in one of the more Darwinian neighbourhoods of Detroit and excelled in cash generation for one of the more successful gangs. He’d been drafted into a relatively prestigious American airborne unit and seen action on Lalande. He’d worked his way through the ranks, played the system - first degree, commission to officer, some clever investments - and there’d been a corp job waiting back in the world. By all accounts he applied the same natural selection skills he’d learnt in the street to the boardroom. More than twenty-five dead execs by his sword. More importantly he was canny, good at business, as well as hell on wheels with a sword.