Veteran

by Gavin Smith

  Now he was an executive without a portfolio. Reading between the lines he was the Cabal’s corp liaison, their fixer. He solved the problems that didn’t require Rolleston’s violent attention.

  I saw Cronin smile. It was the sort of smile that would put people at ease, though I couldn’t help but think there was a predatory quality to it. He seemed to be sitting in the lobby of some kind of plush comfortable-looking hotel.

  Standing not far away from him was the muscle. The guy was huge, as big as Balor, but nominally human-looking though his features were a mismatching patchwork collection of ugliness. His eyes were lenses but seemed to bulge out like a fish’s, and he had a very pronounced, forward-jutting jaw. He wore an expensive and well-tailored suit that he looked very uncomfortable in. A Hawaiian shirt beneath the suit jacket and a large trilby finished the ensemble. Everything about him screamed cybernetic-induced psychosis, not least his dress sense. I don’t think I would’ve liked to fight this guy. I wasn’t even sure I’d want Gregor or Balor to fight him. He stood a little way from Cronin, constantly scanning the surrounding area. He was paying no attention whatsoever to the events unfolding on the viz screen.

  I downloaded the muscle’s bio. It filled me with disgust. He’d been US special forces, spent his time on Lalande as well. Possibly that was where he’d met Cronin, but he’d come back to spend time in a Green Beret counter-insurgency unit. Basically he killed humans. He’d been loaned out and cross-trained with the CIA’s Special Activities Section, their paramilitary black-ops wing. Just before he’d gone to work for Cronin he’d been in command of the Washington branch of the IRS’ elite SWAT audit team. He was a taxman. His name was Martin Kring.

  ‘Cronin, you piece of shit,’ Gregor hissed at the viz screen.

  To your friends and everyone watching this I think it’s important that we all know that MacDonald is completely compromised by the alien entity that resides within his flesh. He works for the enemy. Whether or not that is the case with Miss McGrath I cannot say, though I suspect it is, but we studied MacDonald for over a year and he is definitely one of them.’

  ‘That’s bullshit!’ Gregor said.

  ‘Why, because you say so? Whatever you think of us, we have worked in humanity’s best interests—’

  ‘Funny, it looks like you’ve worked in your own best interests. Though even allowing for that I can’t imagine why you started the war,’ Mudge said.

  ‘I wasn’t even alive when the war started, and we only have your word for it that you think the people I work with had anything to do with it,’ Cronin said evenly.

  ‘My word? I’d call it a lot of evidence, but I would encourage people to check it for themselves.’

  ‘I’m not about to get into yet another argument about mediation with you. People are smart enough to see through these things. I’m sure any vet knows the self-evident truth about the nature of Them,’ Cronin said with a look of distaste on his face.

  ‘Or, you know, check out the evidence for themselves. What I don’t get though is why start the war in the first place? I mean, I could see that you and yours would make a lot of money investing in munitions, cyberware, shipbuilding, electronics and various other industries, but surely it was an insane thing to do? You couldn’t know you were going to beat them?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘Then surely you’ve answered your own question,’ Cronin said.

  ‘They’d studied Them,’ Gregor began. We all looked over at him and suddenly it was his face on the viz screen. He was being filmed through Mudge’s eyes. ‘They’re not at all like us, like you. The Cabal aren’t even sure if they’re sentient as such. They theorised that they could be some kind of organic neural net processor, a biological learning machine, but they learn by reaction. If you can control their stimuli then you can control their progress. Basically they would always meet force with a similar degree of force, because you were teaching Them how to fight as you went along,’ he finished.

  ‘They guaranteed a stalemate,’ I said. Gregor nodded.

  ‘And no biological warfare that would’ve wiped us out, no nuclear weapons etcetera, etcetera. Nobody would be allowed the tools they needed to win. They modelled it using the most powerful software they could find. They forecast all possible outcomes of the conflict until the odds were in their favour and the chances of Them winning were infinitesimal, and then made sure they kept back certain edges for themselves,’ he said.

  ‘What edges?’ Pagan asked. I glanced up at the screen. Cronin was listening intendy but showing no other reaction.

  ‘Early precursors to Crom—’ Gregor began.

  ‘Even out of the evidence you have manufactured there seems to be none to support the existence of this Crom virus you talk of,’ Cronin interrupted.

  ‘A more primitive version designed to kill rather than control,’ Gregor finished.

  ‘That’s still a hell of a risk,’ Mudge said.

  ‘Not really. They are ordered and cooperative, where we are chaotic. It was surprisingly easy to gauge how They would react. At the end of the day They are little more than plants and as predictable as which side of the boulder moss grows,’ Gregor finished. I must admit, uniformity of tactics or not, They never felt all that predictable when I was fighting Them.

  ‘We were fighting space lichen?’ Mudge said. ‘Somebody should’ve said.’ The thing was, I couldn’t decide if knowing that would’ve made things better or worse for morale.

  Mudge turned back to Cronin. ‘I still don’t get why?’

  ‘Why what? I’ve little idea about any of this. It sounds like an involved conspiracy fantasy. Why don’t you ask one of your alien friends? They’re running this psy-op,’ Cronin answered impassively.

  ‘Do you ever get tired of all the spin and the lies?’ Mudge asked. Cronin didn’t dignify the question with an answer.

  ‘Look, let’s ignore this guy’s bullshit. I think we’ve got more important things to worry about.’ Everyone ignored me and apparently the fact that Rolleston and the Grey Lady could breach at any moment. I couldn’t be the only person shitting himself, could I?

  ‘Biotechnology,’ Gregor said. He sounded tired. I could understand why; trying to navigate through this sea of lies against constant denial was tiring.

  ‘I can see that,’ Mudge said. The viz screen was split three ways between him and reaction shots of Cronin and Gregor. ‘But even allowing for great advances and huge profits it just seems a trivial reason for sixty years of conflict.’

  ‘Once again you answer your own question. Nobody but an insane person would do these things,’ Cronin said. Gregor glanced up at the viz screen but pretty much ignored him.

  ‘Not really. Profit aside, many of the Cabal are dying. Mixing Their naturally evolving but incredibly advanced, in its own way, biotechnology with human ingenuity and scientific know-how and you’re looking at incredible advances. Advances we would have problems even imagining,’ Gregor said. Mudge gave this some thought. He did a close-up on himself just so everyone could see how thoughtful he was.

  ‘And that’s the thing, isn’t it?’ Mudge said. ‘God, can you bring the images of the Cabal up on the screen?’ On the viz screen the images we’d seen earlier appeared. They were almost all fat old white guys being kept alive by drugs and machinery that probably cost thousands every day if not every hour. Presumably they communicated through the net but I don’t think they were jacked in at the moment, unsurprisingly. ‘All this is for them?’ Mudge asked. ‘What the fuck have these vampires got to do with the rest of us? Why are they even living, if you call that living, off of us? Anybody else want to die for them?’

  ‘They worked for the power they have and deserve to be rewarded for it,’ Cronin said, though I wasn’t sure even he believed that. He seemed very uncomfortable with the images of the sleeping members of the Cabal.

  ‘These people had their time; now it’s over they all should’ve died a long time ago. This is deeply unnatural,’ Mudge said in disgust.

  Cr
onin shook his head. ‘This is irrelevant, a fantasy. What proof have you got of us harvesting Them biotechnology? Even your God seems to struggle to fabricate evidence.’

  ‘Because you used Demiurge to purge your systems,’ Morag spat with a surprising amount of hatred in her voice.

  ‘There’s me, there’s my last year of being a fucking test bed for you after Rolleston exposed the Wild Boys to a Ninja in the hope that one of us would be infected. What were you doing then?’ Gregor asked. His voice had become nearly a whisper. Cronin concentrated as if he was receiving data.

  ‘Rolleston ordered you to hunt and kill one of Their assassination bioborgs, not an unreasonable order to give an SAS patrol. When you were exposed, you were isolated to be studied so we could find a way of more effectively combating Them. You’re fabricating a fantasy out of little strands of the truth,’ Cronin snapped.

  Gregor was pointing at Cronin. ‘No, you are!’ he shouted. Even to me it sounded weak.

  Cronin leaned into the screen. He looked angry now. ‘And in the absence of any credible evidence it is your word against mine, and one of us isn’t currently possessed by an alien! What have we done? Nothing! Except try and study you, even see if we could help you.’

  ‘Oh, that’s bullshit!’

  ‘You people, on the other hand, have just single-handedly destroyed our economy and our security apparatus. People have access to information that is dangerous to them. Now everyone in the world can learn how to manufacture nuclear weapons, biological and chemical weapons, genetically targeted weapons and concrete-eating microbes. You’ve just released all the information on banned genetic engineering and cloning processes, processes that were considered to be immoral by the UN. Now people have access to black bio and cyberware, sequestrination cyberware. Or are you going to tell us that you didn’t think of any of this?’ It was quiet again. I felt like I’d been scolded and the answer was no, I hadn’t thought it through. The thing is, there were smarter people than me here. Had they thought it through? ‘You say that we’re the enemies of humanity and then you go and do all this. I trust the comparison with Pandora isn’t lost on you.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Pagan said. I looked over at him. Surely he must’ve thought of all this. I was beginning to wonder if we’d been very stupid. ‘We have made all that information available, do you know where from?’ he asked rhetorically. ‘From the likes of you and your friends. God, all the things that you just mentioned, can you provide evidence for their manufacture and use in, say, the last ten years?’ Text, audio, and audiovisual information began scrolling down the screen. I wondered how many people accessed it. ‘See, it hadn’t gone away. The information was still there. What you’re pissed off about is that we’ve taken it out of the hands of people like you.’

  ‘Yes, congratulations on proliferation. That’ll help,’ Cronin said.

  ‘How will it proliferate? Every time someone accesses this information everyone in the system has the potential to know about it. Surely that’ll make it easier to police?’ Pagan said. He seemed to have recovered from his earlier despondency. It was obvious he had thought of this and he had a counter-argument; the trouble was, I wasn’t sure if it was enough. I didn’t like the idea of genetically targeted viruses or slave cyberware available to anyone. I wondered if this was the part of me that liked the idea of other people making the decisions, making things safe, looking after us. The trouble was we were here because they weren’t doing a very good job. In fact they had become abusive.

  ‘Surely you’ve made every hacker in the world unemployed?’ Cronin said sardonically.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll find something to do,’ Morag said.

  ‘I’ve always fancied farming,’ Pagan said, looking slightly wistful.

  ‘And what about the financial markets? Money and commodities are moved around as information all the time. Now anyone can access this.’

  ‘You’d be surprised how few people that affects. Well maybe you wouldn’t. For most of us it’s still cash under the mattress or illegal credit chips. God?’ Pagan said expectantly.

  ‘While all information is available, security systems are still functioning. Money and other commodities still cannot be moved except by the authorised person, though now it is a lot easier to check that person’s authorisation,’ God said. I noticed that Pagan was momentarily tranced in but he was back by the end of God’s explanation.

  That said, it’s now a lot easier to see how much money people have. Wow! You’re rich, Mr Cronin,’ Pagan said. There was something of the teen-punk hacker about him at this moment. He was enjoying himself. ‘How did you make your money, I wonder?’ Pagan continued. There was all sorts of information scrolling down the screen.

  ‘This is an obscene breach of privacy,’ Cronin said, looking less than pleased.

  ‘I would argue that this information is relevant to the populace as it seems to affect them directly,’ Pagan said, somewhat distracted as he studied the information he’d found. ‘Hmm, a cursory glance would suggest that you’ve made a lot of money from arms and have recently been investing in biotechnology. I wonder why?’

  ‘Do you not understand that your alien computer virus of total truth is a weapon you’ve wielded against humanity? Lies protect humanity as well as deceive them. What if every lie you were ever told was suddenly revealed, would it do more harm than good? From "Yes, you do look fat in that" to Pearl Harbor, we exist in a web of lies, and not all of them are bad. The truth can be a destructive force, as your attempt to pull humanity apart is proving,’ Cronin said, changing tack.

  ‘But why your lies? Why do you get to decide what lies we hear?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘Because we are allowed to, because we worked hard to get ourselves into positions that allow us to make these decisions, because we are strong enough to do so. This is how our system works: it rewards success and it rewards strength. This is how things are supposed to be. Who else is going to lead? You?’ I had to smile at the guy’s balls.

  ‘What about democracy?’ Mudge asked. I almost scoffed. The word seemed a joke, but Mudge was deadly serious: this was important to him. I saw Cronin’s eyes narrow around his custom lenses, designed to look like real eyes, the designer logo just about visible on the large viz screen. I think he was trying to gauge how serious Mudge was.

  ‘We work within the framework of democracy,’ Cronin said carefully. I think he saw a trap. Democracy was a joke to people like this, almost meaningless. He knew it and we knew it, but he couldn’t openly say that.

  ‘Do you think we would’ve voted for the war?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘This is a ridiculous argument. You’re being naive and you know it. The governments that you voted into place allowed us the latitude to make certain moves.’

  ‘Like starting a war?’

  ‘I didn’t stan the war,’ he repeated, sounding slightly exasperated. ‘We’re going round in circles.’

  ‘Should governments act on the will of the people?’

  ‘They do when they are elected, but despite your attempt to simplify it you know that for security reasons the populace cannot be privy to some information and the decisions that come about as a result of them. Through their votes they delegate their trust to their elected officials, who act for them.’

  ‘In their best interests?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘You’re setting up a straw man,’ Cronin said. ‘You want us to be a secret government-controlling conspiracy. You give us prosaic names like the Cabal so you can find a scapegoat. Find someone to blame for your own sense of dissatisfaction because you’d rather attack than actually do anything constructive to help.’

  ‘How is the war—’ Mudge began.

  ‘I didn’t start the war, Mr Mudgie, now let me finish. What you don’t understand is this is the way of things. We exist within the framework of our society as a necessity. We manage the difficult decisions, the decisions where victories involve sacrifice. We are always going to look bad. You want to punish us but all yo
u’re doing is fighting the momentum of your own society. You want to blame us for the start of the war but its beginnings are a lot more complicated than you’re allowing for, and the sad fact is the war began because of the weight of society bearing down on that point in history. What you call the Cabal was acting on what humanity required at that point.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ I said. ‘Fancy words aside, the war started because someone who you work for ordered a passive alien organism to be attacked by an RASF ship.’

  ‘Someone has to lead because so many people will not take responsibility for themselves,’ he said.

  ‘Because people have had it driven into them by the likes of you that there’s nothing they can do, that they’re helpless and they can’t make a difference. That’s not true,’ Morag said.

  ‘Actually it is. Few people have the will or the ability to make a difference. You have to remember the majority of people will not collude with the implacable enemy of their race and put an alien parasite in their head,’ Cronin said. Morag just glared at him but didn’t respond to the cheap shot.

  ‘Even if that were true, then the strong have an obligation to lead responsibly and try and foster that strength in others,’ I said.

  ‘We are making humanity stronger,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you are so full of crap,’ I said. There were sounds of disbelief from the others.

  ‘He’s right. Conflict breeds strength,’ Balor said. I looked up at him. Cronin was looking smug on the viz screen.