‘Don’t be so fucking childish, Jakob!’ This from Morag.
‘They knew. Their response time was too quick. They weren’t waiting for us but they were not far off,’ I said. I could see from their faces that they had considered this. ‘Rolleston told me that we’d been sold out by two people.’
‘Well there’s a source we can trust,’ Mudge said sarcastically.
‘Jakob, you’ve no idea,’ Morag started. ‘While you were getting beaten up by your date Merle saved us.’
Mudge and Pagan were nodding but there was something off about Pagan’s expression.
‘You were the one who was so keen that we kill ourselves rather than be caught. If you had the position to help Mudge and the others further down the alley then you had line of sight to take me out,’ I said to him.
‘That’s not what this is about,’ Merle said. His tone reminded me of the voice I’d heard coming from my mouth when I was locked in my gilded cage. ‘You’re trying to find someone else to blame.’
From the looks on Pagan, Mudge, Mother and Tailgunner’s faces they knew that I was right. Morag was less sure as she was newer to the dynamics of gunfights.
‘Why am I still alive, Merle?’
‘You know I can take that gun off you any time I want?’ he asked me.
‘Stop pointing my gun at my brother!’ Cat hissed, but it was written all over her face that she knew I was right too.
‘Do you think I care what happens now?’ I asked. ‘Either you answer my question or I put a bullet through your head and damn the consequences.’
By now Tailgunner and Mother were lowering their weapons. Strange turned her PDW on Merle.
‘Strange!’ Morag shouted.
I’d glanced at the girl for a moment. Merle could only have told from a slight movement around my lenses, but by the time I was back concentrating fully on him he had both Hammerli Arbiters in his hands. He was fast. One was pointing at me and the other at Strange.
‘Woah!’ Tailgunner shouted as he turned on Merle. Cat brought her shotgun to bear on Tailgunner. Mother aimed her PDW at Cat.
‘Oh this is fucking stupid.’ Morag lowered her pistol.
‘Not if we’ve got a traitor in the mix,’ I said.
‘I’m better than you; I’m faster than you. Drop the gun,’ Merle told me.
‘Oh but mate, it’s a size game, isn’t it. Mine’s bigger than yours. I don’t doubt you’ll be accurate but I fancy my chances at surviving a burst in the face. Your pretty face on the other hand becomes a mess on the wall,’ I told him.
‘I think you should compare sizes,’ Morag said, holstering her pistol.
‘Me too,’ Mudge agreed. There wasn’t much humour there.
‘What about the girl? Maybe you live but she’s dead and you know it.’
‘Anything happens to her and you die as well, Jakob,’ Tailgunner told me. I felt he was being a little unfair.
‘She can put the gun down and walk away any time she wants,’ I said through gritted teeth. Strange helpfully shook her head. I didn’t like having anyone as unpredictable as her involved whether she was on my side or not.
‘Take another step and weird girl dies,’ Merle told Morag. She’d acted like the whole thing was stupid but had been moving back, jockeying to get position on Merle. Morag froze and looked pissed off.
‘Why would he betray you and then fight so hard for the rest of us?’ Mudge asked.
‘I couldn’t figure that out either. If he was still working for the Cabal then he could have destroyed us a long time ago,’ I said.
‘The orders must have come from Earth …’ Pagan said.
‘Something you want to add?’ I asked. Pagan looked stricken. This I hadn’t expected. What the fuck was going on?
‘Don’t buy into his paranoid fantasy; it’s guilt transference, that’s all,’ Merle spat.
‘He was in a hole for six months. He was comms dark the entire time,’ Mudge said. There was desperation in his voice. He needed Merle to not be the traitor. I think that this was the most vulnerable I’d ever seen him. Emotionally. Physically, the wanking on the Hydra still won out.
‘Which means that one of us had to deliver it,’ I said. ‘This where you came in, Pagan?’ I asked.
Pagan shook his head miserably and looked like he was about to say something.
‘The encrypted message,’ Cat said. Now she sounded stricken. I remembered watching brother and sister communicating by hardlink on the Tetsuo Chou on the way out.
‘What message?’ Morag demanded.
‘Shut up, Cat,’ Merle said angrily.
Cat swallowed hard. ‘Sharcroft gave me a heavily encrypted message to deliver to Merle,’ she said miserably.
‘You know better than that!’ Merle was livid now.
‘You should have told us,’ Morag said quietly.
Mudge pointed his Sig at Merle.
‘Why’d you sell us out?’ he asked. His tone was hard and you would have had to know him as well as I did to know how much this was costing him.
‘Are we breaking up, lover?’ was the sarcastic response. If Strange hadn’t been on the line I probably would have shot him then.
‘This mission’s hard on relationships,’ Morag commented with inappropriate dryness.
‘Look, shoot Jakob if you want, but stop pointing the gun at Strange,’ Tailgunner told Merle.
‘I’m sure you’re a big man down here but I’ll walk through you to get out of here,’ Merle told the big Maori.
‘Look around you, wanker,’ Mother spat.
I glanced around. The Kiwis were all aiming guns, some were pointed at me – couldn’t say I blamed them – but most at Merle.
Cat lowered her shotgun.
Merle spared her a look of contempt. ‘You always were a disappointment. Always folding when times are tough.’
‘Fuck you!’ Her voice echoed around the massive cave. ‘We’ve done enough damage.’ More quietly. She walked over and stood between Strange and Merle. Nobody seemed to care if I got shot.
‘It’s a death sentence now,’ I told him.
He looked around at the circle of guns. ‘That doesn’t mean I’ll tell you shit,’ he said as he lowered his pistols.
Everyone relaxed a little. Mother covered as Tailgunner moved in to disarm Merle.
‘He’s got a Void Eagle on his hip and two blades on wrist hoppers. Careful you don’t touch the blades,’ I warned Tailgunner.
‘What were your orders?’ Mudge asked. His pistol was hanging limp at his side. His voice was flat, completely devoid of emotion. Merle ignored him.
‘Come on. We’ve got most of it,’ I told Merle. ‘You’re completely compromised, nothing to bargain for or gain at this point.’
‘Call it professional pride,’ Merle said grimly.
‘Call it being a wanker,’ Tailgunner muttered.
‘You have not acted well,’ Salem surprised me by telling Merle. ‘You have caused much pain. If you persist in this then I will make sure you talk.’ The man’s gravitas was such that I felt like Merle had just been judged. Merle swallowed but said nothing. Who the fuck was this guy? I could see why people could believe he had been one of the Immortals. There was total self-belief there, no doubt whatsoever in his capabilities. Merle could see that as well.
‘Merle, stop being an arsehole!’ Cat said, turning on her brother.
‘Oh well, since you put it that way, I’ll abandon op sec!’ he spat at her with derision.
‘I’ll beat it out of you myself,’ she muttered.
Mudge put a gun to Merle’s head.
‘Three,’ he said.
‘Mudge?’ Pagan and Morag said at the same time. Tailgunner took a step back. Cat stepped towards Mudge. I moved to intercept her.
‘You’ll get him killed,’ I told her.
Mudge didn’t handle personal betrayal well. He’d been despondent back in Maw City after Gregor. It had taken Morag and me a long time to convince him that it hadn’t re
ally been Gregor; that Rolleston had killed him with Crom before he’d left Earth.
‘Two,’ Mudge said.
‘You serious about this?’ Merle asked.
‘What do you think?’ Mudge asked.
It went very quiet. The quiet seemed to last for a very long time. I think Mudge was trying to give his lover every chance he could. I saw Mudge start to squeeze the Sig’s trigger as he began to form ‘One’ with his mouth.
‘All right,’ Merle said quietly.
Mudge held the gun where it was, touching Merle’s temple. Mudge was too close. Merle could have disarmed him any time he wanted. That wasn’t the point. The point was that Mudge was prepared to pull the trigger.
‘You can lower the gun now. I believe you,’ Merle told him. Mudge didn’t move.
‘Mudge,’ Morag said softly. I could see he was still thinking about pulling the trigger. ‘Come on, love.’ Morag reached up and pulled Mudge’s hand down. The tension seemed to drain out of him.
Mudge turned to me. ‘Goddamn you.’
‘I’m sorry.’ It was all I had. It wasn’t nearly adequate for any of this fucking mess. Mudge walked off.
‘Can we have this conversation without any more guns being waved about?’ Morag asked. I handed Cat back her Void Eagle.
‘Sorry,’ I told her. She just holstered the pistol. ‘Well?’ I asked Merle.
‘Disinformation,’ he said. ‘Or are you egotistical enough to think that the prime minister of England –’
‘Britain,’ I corrected automatically. Americans never got that right.
‘– was really going to share Earth’s defence weaknesses and strategies with a lowly grunt?’
I just stared at him. Of course he was right. I was so fucking stupid.
‘So Earth’s not as weak as she told me?’ I finally managed to ask.
‘Right,’ he said.
‘But—’ Tailgunner started.
‘A very few of the operators sent out were set up to hear that information one way or another. The PM and her allies—’
‘Including Sharcroft,’ a miserable-looking Pagan interjected.
‘I suspect including whoever’s left of the Cabal will be shitting themselves. Anyway, they are going to go to the governments on Earth and say, “Look, this is what we’ve done. Unless we unite and work together we are fucked.”’
Mother blew air out between her teeth. ‘That’s pretty ballsy.’
‘You were a sacrifice. I gave a vague warning before the robbery and then dropped a dime on you as it began, and you played your part brilliantly. They didn’t even have to torture you from what I heard.’ He was back to good old contemptuous Merle.
‘You brought them down on us?’ Tailgunner said, nodding towards me. Rannu was still howling violent obscenities.
‘Hey, fuck you. Why are you all so fucking precious? We’re soldiers. Expendable. See, if they were on to me I’d firestorm my memory and kill myself. I don’t have time to turn the plasma rifle on my head so I’ve got a couple of internal suicide systems, but you all just whine. This worked because they were pretty sure that you were too weak to kill yourself and because you’d break quickly.’
Played. We’d all been played.
Tailgunner didn’t look happy. He punched Merle in the stomach. The punch lifted Merle off his feet and doubled him over. Tailgunner looked at Merle with utter contempt. Merle straightened up and spat in Tailgunner’s face. They went at it. Morag was right. There was far too much testosterone around here.
‘Hey!’ Best sergeant’s voice. They ignored me.
‘Pack it in now.’ This from Mother. She was much quieter than I’d been. Tailgunner stopped and Merle relented as well.
‘You didn’t though, did you?’ I asked Merle.
‘What?’ he gasped. He was fighting for breath.
‘Kill yourself when we were on to you.’
He straightened himself up and wiped blood away from his mouth.
‘Well, what are you going to do? I’m loyal to Earth. I’m not working with the bad guys. I think you know that and I’m the best you’ve got.’ All probably true. He wasn’t just loyal, he was a fucking fanatic. ‘But here’s the thing. Now you all know, that’s just multiplied the exposure and the chance of this plan, probably the best plan we have, being fucked up.’ Also right. He grinned savagely and turned to me. ‘So I’m sorry everyone got killed and you were rude to your girlfriend.’ I couldn’t help glancing at Morag. Her face may as well have been made out of the same stone as the cave. ‘But you’re one lucky motherfucker to even be here so relax. It worked and you’re alive.’
I just stared at him.
‘Any other secret missions you want to share?’ Morag asked. I could see the conflict on Merle’s face. Morag was angry. ‘Look, arsehole, I find you’re holding out on us and I will plug myself into your head and kill you the hard way,’ the eighteen-year-old Dundonian girl told the hardened assassin. And he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. What the fuck was going on here?
‘Just one,’ he said. ‘I’m being paid a staggering amount of money to kill Rolleston.’
‘Join the queue,’ I told him.
He gave me a look of contempt that made me want to hit him. Except that he’d already handed my arse to me once.
‘Difference is I can probably do it.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, it’s not as easy as beating up Jakob, you know?’ Morag said.
‘Hey!’ But she ignored me.
‘Multiple plasma shots to the head.’
It could work, I supposed. We certainly hadn’t tried it, and if there was a small-arms solution that was probably the best bet. Except that Merle hadn’t watched Rolleston walk through railgun fire on Atlantis.
‘That it?’ I asked.
‘A tailored virus – the blades are the delivery device. A variant of Crom called Crom Dhu. Designed to kill people with Themtech bio-nanites in their system.’
‘You brought that here?’ Morag demanded incredulously.
‘You sure it does what they say it does?’ I asked. ‘We’ve had bad luck with that sort of thing in the past.’
‘I know they want Rolleston very, very dead.’
‘Cronin?’ I asked.
‘A luxury. They’re terrified of Rolleston.’
I looked at Cat and finally Pagan. Pagan had guilt written all over his face. I saw Morag glance over at him.
‘You need my brother. You try and hurt him, you’ve got me to deal with as well,’ Cat told us.
Tailgunner and Mother looked like that was okay with them. I looked at Morag. She didn’t look happy but she shrugged.
‘Get out of my sight,’ I told Merle.
He looked like he was about to say something but thought better of it. His contempt for us was written all over his face, however.
‘What?! We’re just letting him get away with it?’ Tailgunner demanded.
‘You want to kill him?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’
Despite his anger and what he thought he was capable of at the moment, I was pretty sure that Tailgunner would struggle to murder in cold blood. Mother, on the other hand, I was less sure of. She put a hand on the big hacker’s shoulder.
‘Let it go,’ she told him.
Tailgunner looked like he was about to argue but lapsed into silence and stared at Merle’s back as he walked away from us.
I turned to Pagan. He was pale. Not frightened, but his guilt was palpable. Everyone else was staring at him as well now.
‘What did you do?’ Morag asked quietly.
‘I’m so sorry,’ was all he could manage.
‘Everyone’s sorry, Pagan. Just tell us what you did.’ I was getting angry now. Merle I could see. Fucking me over was just a job to him. After all he didn’t know me. Pagan, however, I’d fought by his side, supported his hare-brained schemes. I’d thought I could trust him. He’d betrayed us as well. It was written all over his face.
�
�They told me to,’ he said miserably.
‘Who? Sharcroft? That prick tells you to do something and you just sell us down the river?’ I demanded.
‘Not Sharcroft and not us. Just you.’ At least he had the courtesy to look me straight in the lens when he said it. I felt something cold in my gut. That feeling I had that there was something slithering around us just out of sight, pulling our strings, manipulating us.
‘Who?’ Morag demanded.
Salem got there first. ‘Your gods?’
Pagan nodded miserably. Afterwards I would think that it was almost an involuntary reaction. I danced forward and jabbed at his face, felt my friend’s nose break under my knuckles, watched an old man hit the ground. Another old man interposed himself between me and Pagan’s prone form with surprising speed for someone in their eighties.
‘Please,’ Salem said.
Morag walked past us and spared me a glare before she knelt down next to Pagan. He had propped himself up against the foot of Kopuwai.
‘You sold me out because of a voice in your fucking head?!’ I demanded. I was leaning around Salem. I saw him wince as I swore.
‘They’re real. We know that now. You know that – you spoke to one of them.’ He was desperately trying to justify himself.
‘Do you know what they did to me in there?! What they showed me?! What they made me do?!’ I was shouting now. He flinched with every question. ‘And you sell me out so your friends in your head can make you feel special?!’
‘I thought you just spilled your guts and had some sex,’ Morag said acidly.
I tried to ignore the jibe even though it felt like she’d just stabbed me.
‘They’re not in my head – stop saying that!’ Pagan shouted.
‘Give me a good reason not to kill you, Pagan,’ I said.
‘Leave him alone,’ Morag said, glaring at me again. She turned back to Pagan. ‘What happened?’ she asked.
As I looked down at one bleeding old man, another in my way, I suddenly felt foolish and impotent. The anger drained out of me. I stepped away from them and Salem relaxed. As the anger left I started to feel the hurt of betrayal. It was an insight into how Morag must be feeling about me.
War in Heaven Page 48
