War in Heaven

7

I ended up carrying Mudge’s stuff. I agreed to be checked for God and surveillance but cheerfully refused to allow them to take my weapons and pointed out I had more than the last time I came. All the while Mudge was dancing around listening to music on his internal systems. He was still stark naked and covered in body paint. I let them check his gear. He just giggled whenever they tried to speak to him. Mudge certainly picked his time.

The Limbo staff just stared at the naked, painted, dancing Mudge as we entered the nerve centre, or what I had come to think of as the long metal mesh tube. Sharcroft advanced on me with the strange metallic, insectile gait of his life-support chair.

I pointed at him. ‘And you can fuck off.’ I threw two vials to one of his aides. One was a DNA swab and the other was blood. ‘That’s all you’re getting; don’t ask for more.’

‘Sergeant Douglas, may I remind-’ his modulated electronic voice started to say.

‘No, you may not. I’m going to speak to my people and find out what the score is. We’ll take objectives off you and all the resources we need; the rest goes dark for operational security.’

‘Breaking laws in the hot sun!’ Mudge shouted. I think it was supposed to be singing. It was very off-key.

‘So you’re taking over now?’ Morag asked.

I turned. I tried to ignore how good it felt to see her. Tried to ignore how good she looked with longer hair and in the white one-piece. Tried to ignore how nervous I suddenly felt.

Pagan stood next to her, looking out of place and uncomfortable without his staff and other accoutrements. I didn’t pay any attention to him. She looked me up and down, raising an eyebrow at my battered state.

‘I fought the law and the law won!’ Mudge shouted again. He advanced on Morag for a hug.

‘Mudge, you’re naked,’ she said by way of hello. Mudge gave her a hug and smeared body paint all over the front of her suit. ‘Och, you’ve made me all mucky!’

We all watched as Mudge boogied over to Pagan.

‘I approve of the body paint,’ Pagan said by way of a greeting and hugged Mudge, who then started dancing towards me.

‘See the way I diffused a potentially tense situation there through the medium of dance?’ he asked loudly as if talking over music in a club.

‘And nudity. That’s brilliant, Mudge. Thanks.’ He was getting closer. ‘Don’t hug me…’ Naked Mudge gave me a hug. Morag was laughing and Pagan was smiling.

‘So is your holiday over?’ Pagan asked as I patted Mudge on the head and tried to disentangle myself while getting the minimum of paint on me.

‘Yeah. I didn’t enjoy it. The world is still full of arseholes and now they’re queuing up to meet me.’

‘You look like you shouldn’t be out on your own,’ he said.

‘There’s an argument for that.’

I glanced over at Sharcroft. As ever, his corpse-like pallor betrayed nothing. I looked back to Morag, who was gazing at me coolly. She hadn’t rushed over to hug me, but neither had she started shouting at me, which I considered a small victory.

‘Is there someplace we can talk?’ I asked.

Pagan nodded and we followed him. Mudge leaped up onto a desk and started dancing.

‘I should be kept apprised-’ Sharcroft started.

‘Fuck off unless you want to get shot,’ I told him. I wasn’t just being obnoxious; I was eager to make sure I remembered just who the enemy was.

Pagan led us into a smaller chamber. It was pretty much empty except for a plain desk, two uncomfortable-looking skeletal chairs, a high-resolution monitor, a holographic projector and some thinscreens. It had a similar metal mesh around it to the main room outside but something about it looked makeshift, scrounged and scavenged.

‘You do this?’ I asked. Pagan and Morag both nodded. ‘Look, I haven’t-’

Morag turned round and glared at me and held a finger over her lips. I felt very green just then. Pagan and Morag swept the place for bugs and found a couple.

‘Little pricks.’ Pagan cursed into the bug before turning to me. ‘In the minute or two we came out to speak to you.’

They both then checked us and took a couple more off me that must have been slipped in when I was being searched. I felt more embarrassed.

‘But I thought this was a what-do-you-call-it cage?’ I said.

‘It is. These are recorders.’

He stamped on them. Morag set up a white-noise projector.

‘Fuuuck!’ Mudge screamed and turned to glare at her. ‘What a fucking comedown. What did you do that for?’

She gently slapped him on the side of the face. ‘Focus, Mudge.’

Then Morag took my head in her hands and kissed me. It’s difficult to describe how good it felt. Afterwards she looked up at me. I could see myself reflected in her replacement eyes. I was a mess but I’d looked a lot worse. Then she hit me squarely on the nose. She was a lot faster and stronger than she had been. It actually hurt. A lot. I reeled back, more from surprise than anything else, and grabbed my nose. She was staring at me, arms crossed.

‘What?!’ I managed.

‘Since talking to you does no good, I thought I’d demonstrate how pleased I am to see you and how pissed off I still am with you.’

Pagan was grinning. Mudge was looking pained. ‘Always the negativity with you two,’ he said despairingly, shaking his head.

‘That may be partially my fault,’ Pagan said.

‘Well I may fucking punch you back.’ I’d been having a much better day until about thirty seconds ago.

‘I merely expressed the opinion to Morag that when you returned we might not have time for her and your normal decision-making process.’

‘Oh brilliant. So now we’ve moved up to violence?’ I asked Morag.

‘Only when talking doesn’t work,’ she said, grinning at me. How very Dundonian, I thought. I blamed Rannu completely for the speed and the strength of the punch. ‘Besides, you’ve been a dick and you’re not taking over.’

‘I’m not here to take over, and where’s Rannu? I want to discuss his hand-to-hand training.’

Pagan and Morag exchanged a look. I groaned inwardly.

‘He went ahead,’ Morag finally said.

This was bad news. I’d had a feeling he would probably go ahead but was hoping that he hadn’t. We could have used him, regardless of what we were going to end up doing.

‘Okay, my suggestion is this: we talk broadly about objectives, we discuss the operating conditions, terrain and details en route, where nobody who can overhear will be able to do any damage. Agreed?’

Morag looked to Pagan. I managed to suppress irrational feelings of annoyance and jealousy. Finally Pagan nodded.

‘Yes!’ Mudge shouted enthusiastically.

‘Where are we going?’ Please not Sirius, please not Sirius, please not Sirius.

‘Lalande,’ Pagan said.

‘Oh well, at least it’s not Proxima,’ I said.

Lalande was a red dwarf system. The only planet that almost supported life was Lalande 2, which was a tidally locked, high-gravity, mineral-rich hellhole. The only place more inhospitable was Proxima, with its frozen wastes and toxic oceans.

‘And Rannu’s gone ahead?’

Morag and Pagan nodded. I wanted to ask what he was doing. I wanted to ask if they had protocols for meeting him, but I did not trust the environment so this wasn’t the place.

‘Are you happy that I handle the security element?’ I asked Pagan and just about in time remembered to look at Morag as well. I left it unsaid that I was assuming they were planning some kind of witchcraft for the mission and would have their own information warfare agenda. It was Morag who nodded. ‘And I’m assuming that we’re all broadly on the same page as regards our general objectives?’

Fuck up the enemy as much as possible and see if we can learn anything while doing it. What would be more difficult was coming up with a way to safely transmit any useful intelligence back. The pair of them nodded again.

‘No,’ said Mudge.

‘You’ll like it,’ I assured him.

He seemed happy with that.

Morag tapped me on the head. ‘There’s something in there I want,’ she said. I guessed she was talking about the information exchange between myself and whatever was calling itself Nuada in the mind of Them.

‘I’m getting a little tired of being poked and prodded, and you couldn’t find anything before but you’re welcome to try again. I’ve got something for you.’

I found the file that Vicar had given me in his sanctuary and tried to send it to Pagan and Morag. It bounced. Both of them were looking at me like I was an idiot.

‘You’re in an information quarantine,’ Morag said, using the tone that young people like to use when their elders are being stupid.

‘Where’s it from?’ Pagan asked.

I told him. Even Mudge looked at me seriously when I mentioned Vicar’s name. His camera eyes revolving one way and then the other in their sockets.

‘He’s alive?’ Pagan asked. I could hear the emotion in his voice.

I shook my head. Pagan covered his eyes with his hands. He hadn’t been this emotional before but I think he’d prepared himself that time. The hope that I’d hinted at was just a bit too much for him. I hadn’t realised they were so close. I felt like an utter shit at my pang of jealousy as Morag gently pulled Pagan’s head down towards her shoulder and held him. Through the jealousy I managed to wonder how someone who’d had her life managed to care about other people. Where had she learned that?

‘I’m all right,’ Pagan finally said.

I decided to spare him the grizzly details, which conveniently meant omitting who it was that actually killed him.

Morag let Pagan go and grabbed a double jack cable and moved towards me.

‘You’re not supposed to-’ Pagan started.

I guessed there was some kind of protocol involving a separate and isolating device, but it was too late. I felt the disconcerting click of the jack being slid into one of the four plugs on the back of my neck. Somehow it felt even more intimate than the kiss. Hopefully it wouldn’t be followed by a punch. I saw the notification of the connection on my IVD. I sent the file. The connection was severed. Morag concentrated for a moment.

‘It’s fine,’ she told Pagan. ‘I knew he wouldn’t poison me.’

Pagan admonished her for not following proper procedure. He then demonstrated it by having her put the file into a stand-alone system, where they used the touch screen controls on the monitor to run a diagnostic on it before Pagan jacked in and stored it in his internal systems as well.

I wasn’t paying that much attention. Morag had left me a text when we’d connected. I wished I’d thought of something like that but then I probably wouldn’t have known what to say. On the other hand, I really hoped it wasn’t a revenge virus. This was a black op; I briefly wondered if they had access to slaveware. I decided to trust her and open the message. Besides, I was pretty sure that slaveware would come in a much bigger file. It simply said, ‘You’re an arsehole but I missed you.’ I think I must have sagged as the tension drained from me. Morag glanced up at me and then turned away smiling. I found Mudge looking at me, grinning.

Yeah, I felt much better. Except for the guilt about sleeping with Fiona.

‘Mudge,’ Pagan started. Mudge’s head jerked around and his lenses refocused on him. ‘You filming now?’ Pagan asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Okay, you can’t do that. It’s a huge security risk.’

‘I’ve got a kill switch set up with extensive parameters on it. Anything happens to me, it runs a firestorm through my memory. I can also trigger it with a thought. Then of course I tell them everything I know because they’ll probably torture me and I can’t think that’d be good, probably quite painful.’

I was smiling at this. Pagan looked like he was getting ready to lecture.

‘Don’t exaggerate, Mudge,’ I said. ‘You’d sell us out for some good weed.’

Mudge pretended to give this some thought. ‘That’s unfair, man. Maybe some good coke or a mind-blowing psychotropic, depending on my mood.’

‘Look, this is very amusing but he’s a-’ Pagan started.

‘He’ll be fine,’ I assured Pagan, who didn’t look very assured.

‘People keep on forgetting what I do for a living. I’m not just another numpty with a gun. You do your job and let me do mine. You might see me as a risk but believe me, it’s just as important. Or do you want this place to remain secret? Sharcroft to remain secret?’ Suddenly Mudge wasn’t playing the stoned buffoon.

Pagan still looked unconvinced. Morag put a hand on his arm.

‘How can you doubt him?’ she asked.

‘He told all last time.’

‘Look, I’m as unhappy about it as everyone else-’ I started.

‘Bollocks, you love it,’ Mudge interrupted.

‘But his timing was good. Though that does remind me. If we’re going into a high-surveillance environment-’

‘Possibly total surveillance,’ Pagan said.

‘Then we’re going to need to look very different.’

‘We know,’ Morag said.

‘We need to put together a list of everything we need,’ I said. I’d started one in my internal systems.

‘We have. We’ve given it to Sharcroft. He said he’d take care of the resources side,’ Morag said smugly.

‘Then we need to ignore it and set up another one, get way too much money from Sharcroft and buy multiples of each item we need,’ I told her.

I was trying not to turn this into one-upmanship, mainly because I didn’t want to get hit. Morag looked at Pagan uncertainly.

‘He’s probably right,’ Pagan eventually admitted.

‘And Pagan, you should know better. Particularly as I’m betting it’s what Rannu did.’ Pagan nodded a little sheepishly. ‘We also need a place to pick it up which is not heavily watched over by the almighty. Speaking of which, any information on Cabal agents? Anything we have to watch out for while we’re shopping?’

At this Pagan looked exasperated.

‘Sharcroft’s not been particularly open about this,’ he said.

‘Let me guess — operational security?’ I asked.

Pagan nodded. ‘From what we’ve managed to garner, there was a purge based on what he knew, but some of them got away. I think he’s also playing counter-intelligence games with them.’

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted something more direct and final. I didn’t think we could afford to play around like that, but then I’d never had the patience for intelligence games.

‘The problem is he’s too much of an old-fashioned spy, or rather too much of an old-fashioned spymaster,’ Pagan finished.

‘Well, we may need to show him the difference between operational security and what he’s running the operation for in the first place.’ So we could do our job. We were also going to have to dissuade him from constantly trying to bug our gear. Though we’d still need to continue checking it.

‘Infiltration?’ I asked. At this Pagan looked a little uncomfortable.

‘OILO,’ he said. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

‘Into high G? Are you fucking nuts?’

‘Cool,’ Mudge said.

‘Look, I know rock-ape combat air controllers live for this shit, but it’s fucking dangerous at the best of times. What are you doing — reliving past glories?’

Pagan shrugged. I think he knew Orbital Insertion Low Opening was mad. ‘Can you think of a better way?’

Now I had to admit that he was right.

‘I don’t want to die in space,’ I muttered to myself.

‘You are such a fucking pussy,’ Mudge told me. I nodded.

‘How do we get there?’ I was unhappy and trying to change the subject.

‘NSA frigate, stealth bird,’ Pagan told me. I was already shaking my head. Pagan was starting to look a little put out. ‘Then what?’

‘Smuggler, a good one. We need to control as much of this as we can and take as much of it away from Sharcroft as possible.’ For this mission there was no such thing as paranoid. Pagan looked like he was about to argue but didn’t. ‘We need more shooters,’ I said.

‘Well, we’ve been looking for replacements for you,’ Morag said. I smiled at her but with the best will in the world she was not going to know as much as us about the special forces community.

‘I’ve been thinking about that, since you mention it,’ Mudge said.

‘In your state of mind? We’re not taking any dragons or talking goldfish,’ I told him.

‘Very fucking funny.’

‘We got a list from Sharcroft of active and inactive members of the community. A bit of a risk, but everyone I know is past it,’ Pagan said and ran his fingers over the monitor’s touch screen, opening the file. Mudge and I just looked at him. ‘I’m not,’ he added defensively.

‘I’ve had an idea,’ Morag said, and we didn’t mean to ignore her exactly.

‘Harry in Blue Troop,’ Mudge suggested. I took the monitor from Pagan and input Harry’s full name. He’d been a good soldier and was easy to get on with.

‘Dead,’ I told Mudge.

‘Yeah? Where?’

‘Sirius, two weeks after we shipped out.’

‘Them?’

‘No, accident. Looks like a mech stood on him.’

‘Fucking cavalry,’ Mudge said, shaking his head. ‘What about Crazy Shirley?’

‘What, that lunatic from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment? Wasn’t she the only girl you ever slept with?’ I asked.

At the time I wasn’t sure why Morag was looking so pissed off but even she turned and looked at Mudge askance.

‘You have to understand she’s really butch,’ Mudge said defensively. ‘She took me.’

‘Too much information,’ Pagan told him.

I’d finally remembered her proper name and found her on the list.

‘Still there, so we’ll be fighting her,’ I said.

‘Shit,’ Mudge said sadly. ‘What about Toadstool?’

‘As a source for drugs?’ I asked but checked. ‘Dead. Overdose.’

‘Fuck. Combine?’

‘The American guy?’

‘Yes, an American,’ Morag said, but we were distracted.

‘Dead. Orbital strike,’ I told Mudge.

‘Boom-Boom?’

‘Dead. Shot down in an assault shuttle.’

‘Did you know anyone with a proper name?’ Morag asked acidly.

A frightening amount of the people I knew vaguely or by reputation were either dead or still in theatre. That meant they were now working for Rolleston and Cronin. A few that we came across had been ‘tasked’, which I guess meant that they were doing the same sort of stupid thing as we were. This went on for a while until I saw the dawning of an idea spread over Mudge’s face.

‘I’ve had an awesome thought,’ he said. I looked at him expectantly. ‘Vladimir.’ He was grinning.

‘He’s a fucking lunatic. Maybe more so than Balor,’ I said, though despite myself I could see the appeal of it. The Spetsnaz warewolf was a good fighter and his insanity might actually be a boon. ‘He’s an officer. Do you think he’ll play along?’ I was checking the list to see if it carried info on Russian special forces. It did but it was sparser.

‘Yeah, if we pay him in cooking ethanol or something.’

I was pleasantly surprised to find Vladimir in the list. There was a link to the rest of the Vucari. They weren’t in theatre, which was a relief. They were however tasked. I was getting tired of this.

‘They’re off dying somewhere else,’ I told Mudge.

He looked crestfallen. On the plus side, I could imagine the Vucari making the Black Squadrons utterly miserable before they got caught. I didn’t like to think about the cost for the poor bastards who got caught in the middle but I hoped the Russians got to eat a few of the true believers.

I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger tiredly and put the monitor down.

‘Finished your little trip down squaddie memory lane?’ Morag asked testily. I couldn’t quite work out how we’d managed to piss her off this time.

‘Hey!’ I started. That wasn’t fair. We’d discovered that we’d lost some people we knew. Mind you, we were used to that.

‘I’ve had an idea,’ she said through clenched teeth.

Pagan seemed to be in a world of his own. I think he was running through the information I’d given them from Vicar. Morag picked up the monitor and slender fingers played across the screen.

‘No offence, Morag,’ Mudge said bravely. ‘But what would you know about the special forces community?’

Morag paused to glare at him but then went back to what she was doing. Finally she handed the screen to me. I looked at it.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s actually not a bad idea.’ I started reading the notes. ‘Interesting family background, long line of Philadelphia gunfighters, 1st Infantry, Tunnel Rat on Lalande…’

‘Which would be useful?’ Morag asked sarcastically.

‘Delta,’ I said finally and then put the monitor down. ‘It’s a good idea, but she’s got a good job. Why would she leave it to come and die with us?’ Morag tapped the screen. I looked back and read a little further. ‘Oh, she got fired.’

‘Because of us,’ Morag said.

That made sense. Or rather it would make sense to the sort of idiot who made decisions like that. She’d done a good job and would have continued to do so.

‘So she’ll be pleased to see us. Do we know where she is?’

Morag shook her head. ‘But only because I haven’t asked God yet.’

Pagan looked over at me and tapped his head. ‘That will help. All the Cabal’s files were purged and the NSA have not been very forthcoming.’ I nodded.

‘Who are we talking about?’ a perplexed Mudge asked.

It was a case of killing two birds with one stone. We’d found out where she was and the Arizona Coast was a good enough place to buy the gear we wanted. I think the best thing about it was the coastline was close enough to ride to. Though we’d borrowed a hover truck to carry whatever we bought back with us. It was almost fast enough to keep up with the bikes.

Pagan was driving the truck, much to Mudge’s disappointment. Mudge had been trying to choose just the right driving drug when Pagan nipped into the cab and plugged himself in. Mudge had insisted on finding something called peyote for what he called an authentic desert experience. Pagan had appeared unwilling to subject himself to Mudge’s drug-fuelled driving.

The best thing about the trip was that it had pissed Sharcroft off. I was never going to get tired of that. The best thing about Limbo was that I’d managed to get some decent food and a good night’s sleep. This was after I’d had a disconcerting several hours with both Morag and Pagan plugged into my head trying to find the elusive info that they hoped Nuada had planted somewhere in my systems. They found nothing. It didn’t matter to me: I got to sleep next to Morag.

Pagan had cornered me the following day and insisted that we connect via cable. I felt a little self-conscious as he plugged into me. He was so security-conscious that he didn’t even sub-vocalise. Instead we communicated via text message.

‘Morag has tried but she could not remember what Nuada asked you to remake,’ he texted me. He was trying to keep his face expressionless but I was pretty sure he loved that I’d had a religious experience after some of the discussions we’d had.

‘Pays Padarn something,’ I texted back. This he looked less impressed at. ‘I think it was in a foreign language,’ I added defensively.

‘You should have come to me immediately, while it was still fresh in your mind,’ the next message said. I nodded and tried to look contrite. I still wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t all bullshit. Pagan was concentrating. I reckoned he was cross-referencing some internal directory. I hoped he was enjoying himself but I hoped it sarcastically.

Another message appeared in my IVD from our hard-wired link. ‘Do you mean Pais Badarn Beisrydd?’ It sounded right but I wasn’t sure. I decided to make my life a little easier by answering in the affirmative and asking if he knew what it was.

‘Yes, it’s part of British and Arthurian myth. It’s one of the thirteen treasures of Britain. It’s a cloak or a coat that is said to turn the wearer invisible.’

‘That’ll be useful,’ I texted back. I was wondering if he would pick up on the irony in a text medium.

‘You’re taking it too literally,’ he replied. Apparently not. ‘I think it’s either part of a program or a program that might help us move unseen in Demiurge-controlled systems,’ he continued. ‘If only Nuada had given it to someone useful.’ Pagan was smiling. I gave him the finger. Then something occurred to me.

‘Maybe her head’s too busy?’ I asked, meaning the presence of the ghost of Ambassador in Morag’s head.

Pagan shrugged.

Then I sent another text. ‘Did she see anyone while I was away?’

Pagan looked pissed off. It felt like I left his reply blinking on my IVD for a long time. Pagan had unplugged us both before I had the guts to open it. It simply said, ‘Did you?’ Pagan was watching for a response. I knew it was written all over my face. Pagan shook his head and walked out of the workspace.

I’d left my bike in an old hangar building on the surface close to the silo. The muscle car and dirt bike we’d stolen were there as well, as was the military surplus hover truck we’d borrowed. A secondary or tertiary reason for owning a bike like the Triumph Argo, loath as I was to admit it, was to impress women. I wasn’t disappointed by Morag’s response. Though she appreciated it as someone who liked riding bikes when she had the chance.

She had on a pair of bike boots, armoured combat trousers, a hoodie and an armoured leather jacket with some complex and possibly Celtic design painted on the back. She looked like a normal street kid as she checked the bike out. I couldn’t help smiling.

‘I like it,’ she said. ‘Let me ride it.’

‘Morag, I very possibly love you, but no.’

I could hear Mudge and Pagan arguing in the background. She gave me a strange look. It lasted for some time. I was starting to wonder what I’d said wrong this time.

‘You can ride pillion if you want,’ I said.

She just sneered at me and climbed onto the dirt bike. The engine started as she texted the code to it. She gunned the motor and was out of the hangar. I had to admit that Morag was getting much better at riding. I remember nervously watching her ride on the Dead Roads. She had obviously far surpassed the skillsofts that she’d used to learn initially.

I sent the codes to my own bike as I watched her dust cloud speeding away from us. The Argo was a much faster bike so it wasn’t going to take long to catch her. I climbed onto my rumbling machine. The hover truck’s armoured skirts were inflating as I headed out of the garage after her across the nearly featureless desert plain. I felt the sun like a physical force as soon as I left the shade of the hangar. This was despite my coat’s cooling system.

The desert surprised me. It had a lot more colour than I thought it would. Admittedly they were mainly reds, browns and yellows with the odd patch of green, but it was still beautiful. The size and blueness of the sky with just the odd scudding cloud took some getting used to, as did the distance to the horizon.

We tried to avoid main roads and towns where we could. It was easier in the Navajo Nation, who took our tolls and then minded their own business. We drove and rode through a number of deserted towns. It felt like an empty land. I liked that.

We camped less than twenty miles from our destination. We could see the glow of New Venice from where we made camp. Started a fire, cooked food and drank sour mash. It wasn’t as good as single malt whisky.

Mudge sang us songs that he assured us were authentic for the situation. He said that it was called country and western music, a pre-FHC style that predated the country and metal

that Cyberbillys favoured. It sounded like a dying cat trying to yodel. I was pretty sure that Mudge was running some kind of shitty karaoke program on his IVD.

Later on when we were all quiet, enjoying the stars as the fire burned down, Morag in my arms, Mudge threw me a file. I pushed it into one of the plugs in the back of my neck and downloaded the music. It was by a man called Cash. It wasn’t the sort of thing that I would normally listen to but it fitted.

In retaliation for the destruction of the Brazilian Spoke and the use of air-launched, nuclear-tipped, anti-satellite weapons on several orbital facilities, the Multi Nationals and their backers had destroyed California. It hadn’t slipped into the ocean like some had once thought possible, but the ocean still swamped much of it.

They had targeted the San Andreas Fault, another fault area called the Eastern California Shear Zone, as well as offshore fault lines. The kinetic strikes were much more extensive than the Birmingham bombardment and had pierced the faults down through the Earth’s crust. The damage from the resultant earthquakes was appalling, but it was the successive tidal waves from the bombardment as well as the subsequent underwater quakes and volcanic activity that had caused the most deaths. It was the greatest loss of human life as a result of a single incident in human history.

It redrew the Californian coastline and turned much of the previously dry state into a muddy salt swamp. More flooding took place as a result of the global rise in water levels. All coastal cities had been destroyed, as had many of the cities further inland. The state’s as well as the country’s economy lay in ruins. It was a blow that America had not really recovered from in the intervening two hundred and fifty plus years.

California had become a ghost state, a waterlogged equivalent of the Dead Roads inhabited by few but the truly degenerate and insane. Large swathes of it were a shallow sea, the water broken only by the rubble of pre-FHC civilisation.

Mudge told us the story around the campfire. Growing up, we’d all heard versions of it but he had the education to know it properly, I guess. Pagan probably knew it too but he remained quiet and looked solemn, even sad. I tried to imagine what that night had been like. It must have felt like the end of the world. I wondered if they’d had time to realise something was wrong. Would they have been able to understand the magnitude of the disaster that was killing them? I could only think of it in the most abstract terms. I hoped that they had died quickly, but I knew many of them would not have.

The same night the corporations hit the faults they had also hit every single dam on the Colorado River. This, along with the general rise in the water table, led to partial flooding of the Grand Canyon and surrounding areas. While it paled in significance compared to the destruction of California, it was another blow against America’s infrastructure. The lights went out in Vegas just before the aftershocks hit it. It also led to the Grand Canyon and environs becoming euphemistically known as the Arizona or Nevada — depending on what side you were on — Coast.

Vicious, often artificially augmented, tidal bore waves forced down narrow canyons gave birth to the dangerous sport of canyon surfing and turned the Arizona/Nevada Coast into a the number-one surf spot in North America. Though the truly hard core sometimes risked the dangers of California to surf the ruins of its destroyed cities. The area had been developed by an alliance of mob money and the local Hulapai Native Americans, who had ensured that the land was not further abused too much. Fortunately, as the target market was surfers, not too much development was needed. They liked to rough it. The development alliance used surf tribes to police the coast. Some of the tribes were borderline feral people from the ruins of California.

The free and easy approach to law enforcement coupled with a love of cash meant a burgeoning grey market. We were hoping to find what we’d need in the arms and tech markets of New Venice.

I felt overdressed in my raincoat. Everyone else looked much more at home, particularly Pagan with his staff and ritual accoutrements back on show, although our pale and soon-to-be-red skin marked us out as Europeans.

Much of New Venice clung to the canyon walls or made use of caves in the side of the canyons, though the Hulapai council had forbidden any excavation. The streets were often rope bridges out over the water, or platforms linking buildings that clung to the cliff. Most of the people were tanned, muscular and heavily tattooed. There was a lot of scar tissue on show, some of it ritual, most of it the result of meeting a canyon wall at speed. Many were heavily pierced and/or had their hair cut, braided or deadlocked into elaborate patterns. They wore shorts, cut-offs or wetsuits. The women wore bikini tops and the men were mainly stripped to the waist. Most carried knives but only the tribal police seemed to wear guns.

After we’d found people who seemed trustworthy enough to bribe to look after our vehicles, we asked God where she was, knowing that she would have asked God to alert her if anyone made enquiries about her. Then we made our way through New Venice down into the main canyon. As we took the bridges over the smaller canyons we began to see the surfing. The surfers would watch one of the tidal bores approaching and jump off bridges into deep-water rapids. Then they had to sort themselves out and get ready to catch the wave. If/when they caught the wave it shot them down the canyon like a bullet. The canyon walls were smeared with sun-baked blood.

‘I want a go!’ Mudge shouted as we watched three surfers jump from the bridge we were on. Two of them almost immediately wiped out. One of them didn’t come back up as we crossed.

‘Focus,’ I told him.

I was trying to decide if it was any more dangerous or stupid than scheme racing. Probably not, but then I’d done that for money. Or at least I’d thought I had.

‘Me too,’ Morag said. I could hear the excitement in her voice.

We found her in another, narrower canyon. She was on a bridge, board ready, about to jump. We tried to approach her but armed surf tribespeople stopped us. The fact that they were carrying guns suggested they were police.

I opened my mouth to shout to her but Pagan put his hand on my shoulder. Mudge was shaking his head as well.

She looked much as she had, except instead of exo-armour she was wearing a shorty wetsuit. I could see a lot more of her now. She had the sort of body that looked like it had worked hard all her life, all hard muscle and very little fat. Her head was still completely shorn of hair. Her skin looked a darker shade of brown, almost black, but that may have been the shadow down here away from the sun.

If she knew we were here then she gave absolutely no indication of it. She glanced behind her at the bore wave. To me it looked like a near-solid wall of water. Gripping her board, she jumped.

As one we moved to the edge of the ledge we were standing on. She surfaced momentarily, lying flat on her board, carried along by the fast-moving water, then disappeared again as the wave reached her. Cameras on remotes followed her progress. There was a thinscreen stuck to a smooth part of the canyon wall showing the footage. She rode the wave. There was no look of joy or pleasure on her face like I’d seen on some of the others, but instead a look of intense concentration. She was working at it.

It was going well until she tried to climb the wave. To me it looked like she just didn’t have enough room for the manoeuvre she was attempting. The tip of the board hit the canyon wall, snapping off, and the force of the wave catapulted her into the air. She hit the rock with enough force to make all of us flinch.

‘Oh well, that was a waste of time,’ Mudge said.

‘Shut up, Mudge,’ Morag told him.

We found her sunning herself on a rock outcrop higher up and further along the canyon. The impact had cut her head open and split her subcutaneous armour. I was pretty sure I could see the bone-white of skull. Most of her skin was missing down her right side, scraped away down to the armour. She may have cleaned her wounds but she hadn’t dressed them yet.

There were a few other people around. I was supposed to be checking all around us but found myself polarising my lenses and looking up the rock walls at the sliver of blue sky above.

‘Hello, Cat,’ Morag said to her. Cat Sommerjay, ex-C-SWAT commander from the Atlantis Spoke, opened one of her eyes. She cast a black lens over us.

‘I’m not interested,’ she said.

‘We’re paying,’ Morag said.

‘I had a job.’

Through no real fault of her own, concrete-eating microbes had been used twice on the Atlantis Spoke on her watch. This had resulted in the most amount of damage done to a spoke since the fall of the Brazilian Spoke during the FHC.

‘Look, we’re sorry about-’ Morag started.

‘Sorry?’ Cat sat up, opening both eyes to look at us. ‘Sorry! I’m fucking unemployable thanks to you people. Two major terrorist incidents on my watch, in a spoke. Have you any idea how fucking hard I worked to get to the head of that team?’

‘That why you’re down here trying to kill yourself?’ Mudge, the diplomat, asked. Cat turned to give him a proper NCO glare. He didn’t flinch.

‘No, asshole. I had some back pay due and I always fancied giving it a go.’

‘So why aren’t you dressing your wounds?’ I asked despite my better judgement. She turned to look at me. ‘No, you’re not trying to kill yourself, are you? Just enjoying a little pain.’

She turned angrily to grab her towel. I may as well have been asleep. She made it look natural but I still should have known better. I think Pagan started to move. Cat grabbed the huge pistol from under the towel. From sitting she rolled to her feet. She had the pistol in a two-handed stance and I found myself looking down the bore of a very large barrel.

It was a tunnel-rat pistol. Often they had to squeeze into small places, so they needed pistol-sized weapons with a lot of stopping power. It was an IMI Void Eagle chambered for caseless. 50-calibre rounds. She had a small microwave emitter fitted under the barrel designed to ‘cook’ a Berserk — mess it up just long enough to empty the magazine into it. You needed balls to hunt Them with just a pistol, even one this big.

We spread apart to make it difficult for her to target all of us. Even Morag. I was pleased that we’d worked together long enough that this was instinct. I was less pleased that the gun appeared to be pointing at me.

‘I’m pretty sure a round at this range will pop his skull off. All of you stop moving.’ As she talked she was looking quickly between all of us. She was just slightly too far away for me to try a disarm even with my enhanced reflexes. The more I was seeing of Cat, the more I was convinced that Morag had chosen well. Assuming she didn’t just shoot me. ‘Give me a good reason not to,’ she said. I couldn’t at that moment think of one.

‘You’re right. You don’t owe us shit; we owe you. So unless you want money we can’t offer you anything,’ I said.

Just for a moment her eyes flickered back to me. That was a mistake.

Morag and Mudge drew on her. Now she had two much smaller automatics pointed at her. When had Morag got so fast?

Cat just grinned wickedly. ‘Aim for the wounds, boys and girls, because that small-calibre shit is just going to be flattening itself against my armour while I kill Jakob here.’

‘Fucking army,’ Pagan said, shaking his dreadlocks despairingly. ‘I suppose having a drink and talking about this before we all decide to kill each other is out of the question.’

‘I’m still not hearing a good reason not to kill you,’ Cat said.

Some of the locals were taking an interest. This wasn’t good. Four obvious outsiders picking on someone who looked like she belonged. People were beginning to edge towards us. So far none of them had drawn guns.

‘You stuck up for us. You didn’t raid the node like you were ordered. You must have believed in what we were doing,’ Morag said. There was a kind of pleading in her voice. She really didn’t want this to turn bad. She wanted Cat on board. I was just very eager not to get shot.

‘Maybe. But tell me — do you ever think through your actions? The cost to other people.’

‘Now wait a minute. We risked a lot. We were trying to help,’ Pagan said. Now he was getting pissed off. He had a point. From our perspective the whole thing had been hard, dangerous and painful from start to finish.

I didn’t like how the crowd was getting larger and closer.

‘“We”? Think further out. I mean did you even get what you wanted?’ she asked. ‘Are you here to ask me to cause more mayhem with you?’

Mudge started grinning.

‘Right again,’ I said. ‘We didn’t think it through enough. We’re trying to make it better if we can. If that’s possible. Cat, you losing your job was pretty much the least of it.’ I could see her finger on the trigger. I wasn’t sure, but it looked like she was starting to squeeze it. ‘But things had to change, and I think you know that. In fact I know you know it because of the decisions you made on the day.’ She was just looking at me now. I couldn’t read her expression but hydrostatic shock from a ballistic injury hadn’t sent my head tumbling through the air, which was good. ‘We’re cunts, I’ll admit that…’

‘Good of you,’ she said through gritted teeth.

‘But we’re not the bad guys, and I think you know that. You can take it out on us if you want.’ She said nothing but a minute change in her expression suggested she was about to shoot me. I think we’d significantly underestimated how pissed off she was. ‘But you don’t have to!’ I added desperately.

‘Cat, please,’ Morag pleaded. I think that was probably more useful than my whole we-are-cunts speech.

‘If she shoots you, can I have your bike?’ Mudge asked.

‘Fuck you, journo, you’re next,’ Cat said, but I was sure I saw the trace of a smile.

‘You’re better off shooting the girl first — she’s faster.’

‘Mudge,’ I said exasperated, shaking my head. Pagan and Morag were both smiling.

‘What? I’m just saying. It’s tactical advice,’ Mudge said defensively.

‘All right. I’ll listen but I reserve the right to kill you later,’ Cat said.

‘I suspect there’s a queue,’ Pagan muttered, glancing around at the crowd.

‘Okay but before you do, you should know that this job looks like a one-way trip,’ I told her.

Mudge, who was still pointing his gun at Cat, turned to look at me. Pagan was shaking his head.

‘Good negotiating,’ Mudge said incredulously.

‘No, she needs to know,’ Morag told him.

Cat was looking between Morag and me.

‘At least you’re honest. I’m going to put my gun up and then you two put yours…’ Mudge and Morag were already holstering their weapons. ‘Never mind.’ Cat lowered the Void Eagle and let it hang at her side. The crowd seemed disappointed. I wondered how much blood in the water was enough for them.

‘Are you going to want more shooters?’ Cat asked.

‘Depends,’ I said. ‘We need reliable people who we can work with.’

‘That could be hard; you did just point out you’re a bunch of cunts.’

‘Jake was speaking for himself,’ Mudge said.

‘No, he was talking about you as well,’ Morag told him.

‘That hurts. There’s just no need for that.’

‘How do you guys get anything done?’ Cat asked.

‘We wait for a lull,’ Pagan told her.

‘Did you have anyone in mind?’ I asked.

I was exasperated and a little embarrassed about the banter. At the same time it was a good way to wind down the tension.

‘Maybe, but as well as a fuckload of money-’

‘You did hear him say that this was a one-way trip?’ Mudge asked.

‘Which none of you believe.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ I told her. It was true. I really didn’t fancy my chances on this one. I just didn’t see how we could pull it off and get away with it.

‘I’ll want something else,’ Cat told us.

Cat was enough of a pro to know that we couldn’t brief her until we were in a reasonably secure place. She also wouldn’t tell us what she wanted — for the same reasons, I guessed.

She agreed to act as a guide for us around the arms and tech bazaars, which were held in large caves or under colourfully dyed tents. Because we were outsiders we decided to stick together while we were buying what we needed. This meant that Cat, Mudge and I were bored stupid while the techno-geeks got their stuff, but once they’d done that we got to buy guns! And other gear we’d need as well. I was a little bothered by how enthusiastic Morag was about buying weapons.

It was past midnight by the time we left. We found a different place to camp from where we’d been the night before. We ate, shared some more sour mash and then got some sleep. I wondered to what degree we’d been watched and by whom.

The next few days were spent going through the gear. Where possible we’d bought three of everything. We’d managed to get most of what was on our list, though we’d made a few compromises. We checked everything for bugs and found a few, then stripped down and cleaned everything and tested it. I insisted that everyone familiarise themselves with and test-fire their own weapons. We’d bought enough ammunition to overthrow a small country.

Morag had picked a BAe laser carbine for her long. Pagan had turned in his old laser rifle for the newer carbine as well. This made things easier as they would need the same parts and took the same batteries. I was surprised by how good Morag was with the carbine. It was easy to hit things with a laser but we were running small-unit drills and, skillsofts or not, she was picking things up quickly. Pagan had said that she pretty much only needed to be told something once, and then she could not only do it herself but also make connections between other things she had learned and how they fitted together. It was something called eidetic memory. It made her very easy to teach.

Then came the modifications. Going under the knife again. I felt like I had precious little flesh to offer but our bones and musculature needed to be denser. We would need to take nearly constant supplements there to upkeep this process. Ugly reinforcements now stuck out of our spines like dorsal armour on prehistoric lizards. They were supposed to be easily removable, but seeing the metal fused with bone and flesh sticking out of Morag’s back looked so obscene it made me want to vomit. I wanted to tell her to look at what she was doing to herself. Did she want to end up like the rest of us? Mechanical monsters designed to feed a war machine. But I knew her response, I knew her resolve and I think she had her own concerns.

The final modifications were to our respiratory systems. We had a corrosion-resistant coating sprayed down our windpipes and into our lungs. It made us gag and it felt like drowning. We also had heavier-duty, corrosion-resistant filters implanted into our existing systems. Both the coating and the filters would need to be replaced regularly. We were taking a large supply with us. When that ran out we’d have to forage for more. Assuming we lived that long.

Of course Morag had to have a completely new filter system implanted. Another little cut, another surgical scar and more metal in flesh.

Cat was already augmented for operation on Lalande. I asked her what high G was like.

‘It’s like carrying your own weight around all the time. You don’t get used to it.’

When we finally got round to briefing Cat, she had already broadly guessed what we were doing and where we were going. We didn’t tell her too much more because we didn’t trust the environment of Limbo enough. However, Cat told us what she wanted.

We were in Morag and Pagan’s workspace within the Faraday cage. Pagan and Morag had swept for surveillance and found some more bugs. I was considering trying to force Sharcroft to eat them because this was just a waste of everyone’s time. Pagan set up the white-noise generator along with some other electronic countermeasures and we settled down to talk. As we finished with our sparse, broad outline, Cat was flicking through the special forces dossier on the touch screen monitor.

‘Your third shooter.’ She handed me the monitor.

‘Hey!’ Mudge said, affronted at not being considered a shooter. Cat ignored him. I hoped there wasn’t going to be a problem there.

Her choice was not what I’d quite expected. He had high cheekbones on a long face and surprisingly piercing brown eyes, though I guessed they had to be implants. The eyes sort of jumped out at you because he looked pretty intense. His hair was styled into short braids and his skin was just a touch lighter than Cat’s. I figured this for a boyfriend until I saw the name.

‘Merley Sommerjay?’ I asked. Cat nodded. Mudge tilted the monitor towards him.

‘He’s nice.’

‘Thanks for your input, Mudge,’ and then to Cat: ‘Brother?’ She nodded. ‘What? Want to see him dead?’

‘Reasonably often.’

‘I’m not sure about this.’

‘But it’s okay for you to go on ops with your best mate and your lover?’

‘She’s got a point,’ Pagan said. I ignored the flare of irritation and went back to reading his file.

‘A marine?’ I said, glancing at Cat. She’d been US Army and traditionally there was antagonism between the two branches. Cat said nothing. ‘Force Recon, served on Lalande.’

Force Recon were part of the US Marines Special Operations Command. They specialised in reconnaissance but were often tasked for unconventional warfare. They were a reasonable unit.

‘Then he transferred out to the air force and joined the PJs. That’s unusual,’ I continued.

The PJs were pararescue operators, their job to jump behind enemy lines and perform personnel recovery operations or provide medical aid. It was a difficult and very dangerous job, particularly fighting Them. The problem was that the US and Britain had different definitions of what it meant to be special forces.

‘Look, it’s impressive but…’ Cat leaned over and tapped the screen, enlarging part of the information. ‘Oh bullshit,’ I said.

‘What?’ Mudge asked, frowning.

‘Cemetery Wind,’ I said scornfully.

Pagan smiled and shook his head.

‘Really?’ Mudge sounded interested.

‘What’s Cemetery Wind?’ Morag asked.

‘Nothing. They don’t exist,’ I told her.

‘They exist,’ Cat said.

‘They might do, actually,’ Mudge chipped in. He was carefully reading Cat’s brother’s file. ‘What sort of name is Merley anyway?’

‘Mudge, it was you who told me they didn’t exist in the first place,’ I protested. ‘You went looking for them and came to the conclusion they were another combat myth.’

‘Well yes, that was what I told you.’

‘What is Cemetery Wind?’ Morag asked in exasperation.

‘They’re supposed to be an ultra-secret military intelligence unit whose job it is to provide up-to-date and actionable intelligence for special forces operations, except nobody’s ever met anyone in it or worked with one. Cemetery Wind’s a code name. They’ve apparently been called the Activity, Grey Fox, Black Light, the Intelligence Support Agency. Their name’s supposed to change every few years.’

‘Just sounds like another special forces group,’ Morag said, unimpressed.

‘Well yes. Except they’re rumoured to go in first, and sometimes the places they go SF fear to follow.’

‘But sometimes someone provides us with solid eyes-on intel before going in,’ Cat said. ‘Look, I mostly served in the US theatre of ops on Lalande, but Merle was all over. He knows the place like the back of his hand.’

‘It’s a planet bigger than Earth. How could he know the place like the back of his hand?’ I asked.

‘It is bigger than Earth but very little is habitable by humans. Merle’s operated in most of that. He’s even done deep-penetration Nightside recons.’

Lalande 2 was tidally locked. One side always faced the sun and burned; the other always faced the dark and froze. The Twilight Strip between the two zones was the only area habitable by humans. Even then the colonists lived deep underground to protect them from the corrosive winds of the surface and the worst of the acid-rich atmosphere.

Born in vacuum, Nightside was not a problem for Them. They based Themselves in Nightside, where it was very difficult for us to reach, and raided into the Twilight Strip. In order to get solid intelligence, some brave souls in heavily insulated life-support suits had risked the temperatures and set up observation posts.

‘If he’s that deep in with the intelligence side of things, then did he work for the Cabal?’ Pagan asked.

‘Well, you all did at one point or another, didn’t you?’ Morag said. Cat was suspiciously quiet. One by one we all looked at her.

‘Pretty extensively,’ she finally admitted. ‘That’s not to say he knew who they were and what they were about.’

‘It’s not to say he didn’t either,’ Pagan pointed out. He was not looking happy.

‘Mudge? Do you believe in these guys now?’ I asked.

‘I did then,’ Mudge said distractedly. He was studying the monitor. He looked up at Cat. ‘He’s very pretty.’ I’m not sure she knew what to say to that. ‘I went looking for them. I got very efficiently bagged. I was held completely immobile in a stress position for a week. Then someone I didn’t hear enter the room came and held a gun to my head for six hours. Completely still. Never uttered a word. I couldn’t hear him or her breathe. I decided to stop looking.’

‘You make them sound like the Grey Lady,’ Morag said and shivered.

‘Different kind of scary,’ Mudge said. ‘I like him. Let’s use him.’

‘Are you sure you don’t just want to fuck him?’ I asked.

‘He’s my brother,’ Cat protested.

‘Maybe, but if he is Cemetery Wind, then they scare me and make Morag shiver. I also like the idea that one of the guns is a little more subtle than you or me,’ Mudge said.

‘Morag?’

‘I agree with Mudge. It’d be nice to work with someone who can respond to a problem without shooting it a lot.’

‘Pagan?’

‘I don’t like the Cabal connection. But if he’s an ex-PJ then he won’t be as big a wuss about OILO insertion. I say we talk to him’

‘That’s an issue. What happens if we talk to him and either we don’t like what we hear or he doesn’t want to play? He’ll already know too much,’ I asked.

‘It’ll be fine,’ Cat assured us.

I wasn’t quite so sure. Family complicated things and there was a very real chance that we might have to put a bullet in this guy’s head. I couldn’t see Cat getting behind that and she was good people. Besides, it would leave us another shooter down and we’d have to start again.

‘Have you seen where he is?’ Mudge asked as he passed the monitor back.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake. A high-security clipper? En route? What did he think was going to happen?’ I said. ‘Well that’s him out.’

Pagan took the monitor from me. He read the info. ‘What were you thinking?’

‘I was thinking,’ Cat said, ‘that aside from the ridiculous amount of money I want paid in advance, getting him out is my price. Either that or I walk.’ Except she knew and we knew that it wouldn’t be easy if she chose to walk.