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 really 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
