by Gavin Smith
‘Don’t say that,’ Morag said through gritted teeth. I suspected there would be tears in her eyes if she’d still had real ones.
‘Is everything okay?’ Rannu asked, almost tonelessly.
‘Yeah, we’re fine,’ I said, but Rannu did not move.
‘Get out of the way,’ Balor said dangerously. Rannu still didn’t move.
‘Everything’s fine,’ Morag said.
Rannu moved aside for Balor, who glared at him one last time and then stormed off.
‘Thank you,’ Morag said to Rannu and the others. Mudge started to say something but she closed the door. She threw herself onto the bed next to me, causing me some pain, and then burst into tears. Or rather she started sobbing, no tears any more. I held her as best as my decaying flesh could manage.
‘That bastard,’ she managed later through the sobs.
‘I think he honestly thought he was doing me a favour. He’s scared, he’s just not scared of the same things the rest of us are.’ She looked up at me, her brown eyes no longer up to the job of conveying emotion. I struggled to look at them.
‘I’m not afraid,’ she said, and I think I believed her.
‘No?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘Why not?’ In comparison I was shitting myself.
‘I know you’ll protect me,’ she replied with utter conviction.
‘I thought you didn’t need my protection,’ I said, my mouth working faster than my brain.
‘We both need protection,’ she said. Despite the pain I held her to me, my eyes hurting where my machinery prohibited tears.
A day out from Sirius and Gregor was still in a cocoon. All we’d been able to do was speculate. We’d not been able to come up with a solid plan, let alone run simulations. Though in this case I suspected the simulations would have been quite depressing, in a you’re-all-going-to-die kind of way.
The door to the dying room, as I’d come to think of my cabin, opened. Morag and Pagan walked in. Pagan leant heavily on his staff; both of them looked thoughtful. They looked at each other, both seemingly waiting for the other to start. They seemed to be in a state of mild nerd excitement.
‘We need to speak to Gregor,’ Pagan said.
‘Or turn back,’ I said. An option which was beginning to look pretty good even to me, and I had nothing to lose, or rather I did but I’d already lost it.
‘Morag has had an idea,’ Pagan said. I turned to her expectantly.
‘We had an idea,’ Morag said.
‘Well it was more of—’ Pagan began.
‘Move on,’ I suggested.
‘Gregor still has his interface plugs,’ Morag pointed out. ‘We drill through the cocoon and insert a port into him and talk to him in the net.’
‘Can’t you do it wirelessly?’ I asked.
Pagan shook his head. ‘We’ve been trying. Whatever internal ware he uses as a receiver is not accepting incoming transmissions.’
‘And you can’t override it?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Possibly, but I don’t know how much is normal ware and how much is Themtech, and I’m assuming you know what happens to people who try to hack Themtech?’
‘They end up like Vicar?’ I said.
‘At best, and I don’t want to end up like him.’
I looked over at Morag. ‘Wouldn’t you be more compatible?’
Morag opened her mouth to answer but Pagan got there first.
‘Possibly, but if we drill into the cocoon then there’s no risk.’
‘To you perhaps, but it might trigger off some kind of defence system. If that thing is transforming then what’s to say you’ll even be able to find the port?’
‘We’re sending it through on a modified snake,’ Morag answered. Snakes were remotely controlled delivery devices for monofilament fish-eye cameras, old technology. Most people used mites or crawlers these days, but most special forces types still had them around in case they came in useful.
‘Okay, but what’s to say you won’t harm Gregor?’ I asked. ‘The cocoon is after all a protective casing, I’m guessing.’
Both of them weren’t sure what to say. ‘We need to know,’ Morag finally asserted. ‘He shouldn’t have cocooned himself without telling us what the plan was.’
‘Agreed, but if we kill him, we’ll never know,’ I said.
‘So we turn around, which we’re already considering anyway,’ Pagan replied. I fixed him with a glare from my lenses.
‘He’s still a friend of mine,’ I reminded him, though I’m guessing my near corpse-like appearance made me less scary than I used to be.
‘Understood, but he seemed pretty robust. He is after all part alien killing machine. When we get to Sirius we’re not going to be able to hang around for too long, stealth or no stealth. If They don’t find us, the Cabal will.’ He was overstating the point; finding a ship in something as big as space was actually quite difficult.
‘What are you looking for, my permission?’ I asked. Both of them looked a little guilty. ‘You’ve already decided to do this.’ Pagan nodded. I sighed. ‘Fine,’ I said, a little pissed off. ‘Can you at least make sure I’m there when you talk to him?’
‘That’s kind of why we’re here,’ Morag said. She moved over to the bed and, as gently as she could, rolled me over. I found myself staring at the bulkhead. This saved me from having to see the grimace on Morag’s face when she saw my bedsore-covered back, the bleeding sores from the radiation sickness, and smelled the rank smell of someone dying. I felt her plug in the wireless net interface.
‘We’ll call when we’re ready,’ she said and the pair of them left.
The net was tiny on the Spear. Strictly speaking, it could have been any size, but it only existed in the Spear’s own systems. The net representation of the ship was odd. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a skeletal spearhead or the long skull of some kind of mythical beast. Symbols, not unlike the veves Papa Neon used, were inscribed in the bone, though they would change, morphing into other symbols as you looked at them. This was encrypted information from the ship’s operating systems. A huge and largely featureless desert surrounded the net representation of the Spear - presumably this was to symbolise space. The sky was a beautiful rendering of a desert sunset. Different virtual areas of the ship were represented as smooth caves of bone. In one of these caves Morag and Pagan had set up the pub environment that they’d built from Gregor’s subconscious. It looked a little weird among all the polished bone.
The icon I had was actually a pretty good rendering of me, if I’d had no cybernetics or radiation poisoning. This time I thought to check in the mirror behind the bar what colour Morag had made my eyes. She’d made them green; it didn’t look right.
Gregor’s icon was similar to mine, a good rendition of him back when he was human, sans cybernetics. I was relieved to see he wasn’t a Smiler any more. I guess irrational tribal allegiances die hard. Morag was there. She was Black Annis again. I think I’d preferred the Maiden of Flowers or whoever the prettier one had been. Pagan was there in his Druidic icon. All of them were sitting at a table in the centre of the otherwise deserted bar. I walked over and joined them. There was already a glass of virtual whisky on the table. I took a sip; it was well programmed but ultimately pointless.
‘I thought you’d pop like a balloon when they drilled into you? How’d it feel to be violated?’ I asked. Gregor just stared at me. I sighed, or rather the animated virtual representation of me sighed. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I asked.
‘What’s necessary,’ he said.
‘Don’t give me that cryptic shit; you know as well as I do we can’t afford it,’ I said. He should know better.
‘I apologise. It was necessary for me to begin the transformation—’
‘Into what?’ I asked.
‘A form more useful for the job.’
‘How’re you going to look?’
‘Different,’ he said.
Morag and Pagan were just watching.
�
��You needed to tell us about the job before you did that,’ I said.
‘I apologise. I realised I was cutting things pretty fine as regards the transformation, but you’re right. I knew that you’d eventually find a way to contact me,’ he said.
I just looked at him. I felt like really having a go at him but there wasn’t a great deal of point. That didn’t change the fact that I was pissed off with him.
‘So what’s the job?’ Pagan finally asked, breaking the tension.
Gregor looked over at him. ‘EVA into the heart of the Teeth.’
‘Penetrations like this have never worked before. I don’t see any reason why they should start working now,’ Pagan said.
‘Because I will be broadcasting a Them biometric signature. They will literally have to identify you by sight to compromise you,’ Gregor told him.
‘Part of your transformation?’ Morag asked. Gregor nodded.
‘You’re turning into one of Them.’ I said. I needed to remember that regardless of how much Gregor looked like Gregor in the net, not only was his body changed but the way he thought was as well. He wasn’t us or Them but something in-between.
‘Not exactly,’ he said. I was getting sick of this.
‘If you can disguise yourself then why not go alone?’ I asked.
‘I cannot disguise myself as one of Them. It’s not as simple as shifting form. I will be broadcasting a biometric field which will disguise us from Their sensors, but They’ll still be able to ID us visually.’
‘So be sneaky,’ I suggested. I was trying to remember how we’d been talked into this. Gregor was beginning to look somewhat exasperated.
‘We will get caught. Remember, They’re effectively a hive mind. I am not part of that. We will eventually be compromised and I will need your firepower. Also, Crom could affect me and I cannot risk infection. You will need to dispose of it.’
‘If Crom infects you?’ I said.
‘You need to ask?’
‘What exactly is Crom and how is it being delivered?’ Pagan said.
‘About twelve years ago the Cabal seeded the entire belt with unmanned probes manufactured from Themtech. They were organic and broadcast a Them biometric pattern. They were very small but even then Their defences caught and destroyed a lot of the probes but enough got through. They secured themselves as close to major concentrations of Them as they could get. Very basically they were nanite factories producing Crom and sophisticated receivers. When the Cabal is ready they will send a transmission which will release what are effectively smart spores.’
‘How many are there?’ Morag asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Gregor said.
‘Then how are we supposed to find them?’ Pagan asked.
‘We just need to find one, and I know where a few of them are. Then we hack the receiver and send a self-destruct code, which will in turn be transmitted to all the other devices.’ He pulled an envelope out of the pocket of his combat trousers. It was very old-fashioned looking, pre-FHC, with a wax seal and everything. Gregor pushed it across the table to Pagan. Pagan just looked at it. Something occurred to me.
‘I thought only Rolleston had Crom.’
‘The seeds are an older version of Crom - they’d just infect and kill the aliens. Rolleston has the information required to reprogramme the seeds for the sequestration strain of Crom.’
‘He must have done it by now,’ I said sceptically.
‘No,’ Gregor answered. ‘His priority will have to be releasing Demiurge and consolidating his power base with the Sirius fleet but he will get round to releasing Crom.’
‘But he could have already done it?’ Pagan said.
Gregor looked exasperated. ‘Possibly.’
Pagan’s icon shook its head. I knew how he felt. This was getting thinner and thinner.
‘You know Balor and Mudge would just have you release the killer strain of Crom to neutralise the threat,’ Pagan said.
‘Neutralise,’ Black Annis spat, her voice like broken glass being ground.
‘Militarily speaking—’ Pagan began.
‘Not going to happen, and that’s my call,’ Gregor interrupted.
‘They are a people not a weapon,’ Annis said.
‘They are a weapon if Rolleston gets his hands on them,’ Pagan pointed out.
Morag’s Black Annis icon looked like she was about to argue.
‘Okay, this is getting us nowhere,’ I said. ‘Change the subject.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Pagan asked.
‘How do you think?’ Gregor replied. ‘I was locked up in there for over a year.’
‘And they shared all this with you?’ Pagan asked sceptically.
‘No. They programmed my bioware for some pretty sophisticated applications and the rest is my training. I’ve no doubt you would’ve done the same, probably more with your information warfare training.’
Pagan didn’t answer, he just studied Gregor thoughtfully. Lights played across the letter as both Pagan and Morag interrogated the code represented by the letter with their own diagnostic programs. ‘That’s pretty well encrypted,’ Pagan finally said.
‘It’s a one-shot deal. Screw it up, corrupt it, trip any of its booby traps and it’s just junk. You’ve no idea what I went through to get this.’
‘For these spores to work they must be close to a very high concentration of Them?’ Pagan said.
‘They are,’ Gregor replied.
‘We start a firefight in an area concentrated enough for Them to visually ID us in space, then it’s over for us. We’re not going to be able to get out and it’ll be just a matter of time before They overwhelm us,’ I pointed out.
‘Just as long as you hold them off long enough to deactivate Crom,’
Gregor said. So there it was. Instinctively I took a large mouthful of the pointless virtual whisky.
‘So this is a one-way trip?’ Pagan said redundantly. Nobody else said anything. ‘I don’t want to be a hero.’
‘Either we stop it or the Cabal and Rolleston win,’ Gregor said.
‘What about the Earth governments?’ Pagan replied. ‘They have to respond.’
‘Maybe, but in time? We’re here. Now,’ Gregor said. Pagan shook his head violently. ‘What did you think was going to happen when you agreed to come?’ Gregor asked, anger sneaking into his tone.
‘I thought you’d have a better plan,’ Pagan spat back. ‘I’m out.’
‘How long do you think you can run from a Crom-infected Them and the Cabal when Rolleston’s in control?’ Gregor yelled.
‘Longer than flying into Them-central. I’d be better off putting a gun in my mouth!’ Pagan shouted back. Gregor opened his mouth to retort but thought better of it.
‘Then Morag will have to do the hacking, you fucking coward,’ he finally said and turned to look at her.
‘Morag’s out as well,’ I said.
Black Annis swung round to face me. ‘That’s not your decision,’ she said, her voice like ice.
‘Do you honestly think I’m going to send you out there to die after we’ve been through all this?’ I asked.
‘You’re not sending me anywhere; I’m going where the fuck I want!’ she shouted at me, her voice now modulated to sound like breaking glass.
‘This doesn’t help,’ Gregor said.
‘Shut up.’ I turned back to Black Annis. ‘Look, Morag, you’re right. I have no right to tell you what you can and can’t do but what I will do is sabotage any attempt you make to leave this ship.’ Her hag icon looked like it was about to throw itself across the pub table and tear out my throat. I ignored her and looked at Gregor. ‘You, me and probably Balor can go. If that’s not enough, tough.’
‘We need a signals person and it’s not enough guns,’ Gregor said.
‘Then we don’t do it,’ I told him firmly.
‘I’m going,’ Black Annis said. I lost it.
‘Why do you want to die?!’ I screamed at her. ‘For the first fucking t
ime I can remember there’s hope - why do you want to throw that away? If I wasn’t already dead there is no way I would be going on this,’ I said more quietly. ‘If there is any possible way I could live then I would take it.’
‘I’m going to live through it,’ Black Annis said firmly.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, exasperated.
‘Ambassador wanted to make peace. I’m going to talk to Them,’ she said.
All three of us just sat there staring at her.
Then Pagan started laughing. ‘It’s as good an idea as just walking in there and letting Them kill us,’ he said sarcastically.
‘Morag, I understand where you’re coming from, and I believe there will be a time for that, and you’ll probably play an important part in it—’ Gregor began.
‘Not if she’s dead,’ I interrupted, earning myself another poisonous glare from the hag.
‘But we can’t take the risk initially. What if you can’t convince Them before the spores go off? What if while we’re talking the Cabal uses the Sirius fleet to attack? What if They just kill us out of hand before we can do anything for reasons we don’t even understand? Remember, the vast majority of Them are effectively programmed to kill us on sight until They are told different. Let’s save Them first and then approach Them peacefully afterwards,’ Gregor continued as the hag listened carefully.
‘Look. You lot go and do your commando thing. I’ll go and speak to Them. I can’t see any reason not to do both.’
‘How about everyone dies?’ Pagan suggested.
Morag turned to face him. ‘That doesn’t help,’ she said.
‘Neither will us getting futilely killed,’ Pagan said. It was a good point.
‘We won’t get killed,’ Black Annis insisted. ‘I’m the Whore of Babylon, remember.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ Pagan shouted at her. ‘You may be the infant prodigal as far as hacking goes but you know shit about war - which, by the way, this is - and we’re going to need a bit more than youthful optimism to see us through here.’
The hag opened her mouth. It looked like she was getting ready to really have a go at Pagan.
