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.
‘Ogham came to me,’ he started. Pagan had once told me that Ogham was the Celtic patron god of writing and brewing. Pagan identified with him as someone who wrote code. ‘He told me that Jakob had to be given to Demiurge.’
‘Why?’ I demanded.
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you fucking did it anyway?!’ I shouted. I felt like apologising to Salem for my swearing.
