his head.
‘Na zdorovye!’ Vladimir shouted and downed his drink.
‘It means “For health”,’ Mudge told me, leaning over. For some reason I found this very funny.
The Vucari downed their drinks. Then as one they all threw their glasses against the wall. The other special forces types in the bar did not appreciate glasses exploding close to their heads. I don’t know why. It wasn’t as if it was going to hurt any of us. We were on our feet trying to apologise. It was a night of firsts for me. I had not been expecting what looked like a company of military police to make their way through the mess towards us. Everyone was so surprised that it momentarily defused the situation. It got very quiet in the mess.
‘Oh you’ve timed this well,’ Gregor commented dryly.
‘Extensive suicide bid?’ I asked.
The head of the company of MPs was clearly part of their Cyber-SWAT unit. He at least had the courtesy to look very nervous. Most of his men and women looked like they were shitting themselves.
‘Sergeant Douglas?’ he asked. Shit! I racked my brain trying to think of what I’d done. How much alcohol had we stolen? A text message started blinking in my IVD: ‘You have orders to accompany me to the field hospital to hand over your arm.’
That made sense. Presumably the officer who it was meant for wanted it. Must have a lot of pull and no patience to arrange this.
‘Yeah, I can’t see that happening,’ Gregor said, moving next to me. Ash, Bibs, Brownie and Shaz did the same. ‘Mudge, get up,’ Gregor told him.
‘Can I not show support from a comfortable reclining position?’ Mudge asked. Gregor glared at him. Mudge got up.
‘You sicken me!’ Vladimir roared from where he was standing on the table. ‘He is a fighting man! A good man! He lost his arm well, and you come here to do this to him! I will feast on your flesh and crack your bones to sup the marrow!’ I felt he was going a little over the top. All the cyber-dogs were up on their feet and looked as if they were growling despite not making any noise. The MP commander looked like he wanted to cry. I could see Vladimir crouching as if he was readying himself to pounce.
Just before it started I saw Vicar staring at me from the bar. Vladimir pounced. There was a massive fight.
I awoke confused as to where I was. Then I remembered as I looked around the bloodstained bed. My wounds were healing, the small ones mostly gone. The more serious ones would take longer. I should probably get the spine checked out.
What was going on? Had Vicar been on Sirius? I hadn’t known him then. I hadn’t met him until I was on the Santa Maria. But then when I met him he hadn’t been wearing his dog collar; he’d been in fatigues. There was always a chance he’d been there that night. Operation Spiral had taken place in the Sirius system but rumours pointed to it being run from an NSA-controlled frigate in orbit, not on the ground. Why had I seen him there?
I got up and headed back to the room that Kenny had first shown me to when we’d arrived. I wondered briefly where Fiona had gone but found that I couldn’t care less.
The whisky headache that I once again so sorely deserved was significantly augmented by being hit on the head with a spiked ball that I had deserved less. I’d had enough of these fucking crazy people and I was leaving. I just needed to get my stuff and then I was heading back to my campsite. I’d sort the rest of my wounds out when I got there.
This was tainted for me now. The beauty of the landscape couldn’t outweigh the sickness of the people living in it. Maybe that included myself. I couldn’t stay here and I didn’t think that they would leave me in peace if I wasn’t going to play their game. I needed to talk to God.
5
Learning to play the trumpet versus being a gunman. I guessed it just wasn’t meant to be. I was heading south again. Not sure where I was going. The sun had chased the rain away. It was a crisp day but very cold.
Did I belong anywhere? Could I settle? I hadn’t really tried. I couldn’t stop thinking about Morag and her imminent suicide bid.
‘God?’ I asked after switching my internal comms back on.
‘Yes, Jakob?’ Did God sound sad or was I reading that into all those tones because of our previous conversation?
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked. There was a long delay.
‘Little has changed.’
‘Morag?’
‘She is beyond my sphere of influence.’ Did God sound hurt? I wondered if he was upset at being ignored by his creators.
‘God, how did Vicar die?’ I was thinking back to my dream and Vicar being where he shouldn’t have been, in the never-ending replay of all the shitty and dangerous parts of my life that was my sleeping subconscious.
‘I have no information on William Stuttner’s death.’ So that was his real name. But that didn’t make sense.
‘Rolleston could keep it that hidden?’
‘I do not think that was the case.’
‘Vicar’s alive?’ I asked incredulously.
‘I cannot say for sure but that is what the evidence suggests.’
‘What evidence?’
‘The energy demand on the MI5 interrogation facility is commensurate with the power required to sustain both life-support equipment and a sense booth. Also I have no information that would suggest that he has been taken anywhere else or that anyone else is currently being held at the facility.’
‘And that is where he was taken when they got him in Dundee?’
‘Again, the evidence I can gather points to that being a near-certainty. Would you like to review it?’
It made a degree of sense. They would want to interrogate him first. He would have had a lot of information. Not just on Ambassador but also on the God Conspiracy that he had been part of along with Pagan, Big Papa Neon and others.
‘Are they still interrogating him?’ I asked.
‘Evidence would suggest that they are not doing so actively. If they are running a sense booth, however, there may still be ongoing automated interrogation. If this is the case then the information is not being transferred through any means of communication I have awareness of.’
‘If they have everything – and nobody holds out this long – then why is he still alive?’
‘I suspect that the people involved became so busy that nobody got around to killing him.’
Suspect? ‘God, did you just speculate?’
‘Yes, but based on 2.4762 terabytes of supplementary information.’
I wasn’t an expert but I was wondering if God had started exceeding his program. Would he make a bid for freedom? Or, more frightening, try to ‘fix’ what he saw was wrong with us.
‘Where is this facility?’ A file transfer icon appeared in my IVD. It had the address and images of the facility, which looked like a small warehouse in a run-down industrial area, as well as other information God had managed to find. This included footage of Vicar being bundled out of an aircar. He was hooded and his hands were secured behind his back. Josephine Bran had hold of the wrist restraints and was using them to steer the much larger man with ease. She passed Vicar on to some out-of-shape-looking types in suits who I reckoned ran the facility. Then she turned and looked straight into the lens shooting the footage.
I was travelling at sixty miles an hour on one of the less badly maintained Highland roads watching the footage on a small window in my IVD. I knew that this was just the Grey Lady’s instinct telling her where she was being surveilled from. I knew that she was in a different star system to me. Even knowing all this, I still jerked my
