shaking his head.
‘That may be partially my fault,’ Pagan said.
‘Well I may fucking punch you back.’ I’d been having a much better day until about thirty seconds ago.
‘I merely expressed the opinion to Morag that when you returned we might not have time for her and your normal decision-making process.’
‘Oh brilliant. So now we’ve moved up to violence?’ I asked Morag.
‘Only when talking doesn’t work,’ she said, grinning at me. How very Dundonian, I thought. I blamed Rannu completely for the speed and the strength of the punch. ‘Besides, you’ve been a dick and you’re not taking over.’
‘I’m not here to take over, and where’s Rannu? I want to discuss his hand-to-hand training.’
Pagan and Morag exchanged a look. I groaned inwardly.
‘He went ahead,’ Morag finally said.
This was bad news. I’d had a feeling he would probably go ahead but was hoping that he hadn’t. We could have used him, regardless of what we were going to end up doing.
‘Okay, my suggestion is this: we talk broadly about objectives, we discuss the operating conditions, terrain and details en route, where nobody who can overhear will be able to do any damage. Agreed?’
Morag looked to Pagan. I managed to suppress irrational feelings of annoyance and jealousy. Finally Pagan nodded.
‘Yes!’ Mudge shouted enthusiastically.
‘Where are we going?’ Please not Sirius, please not Sirius, please not Sirius.
‘Lalande,’ Pagan said.
‘Oh well, at least it’s not Proxima,’ I said.
Lalande was a red dwarf system. The only planet that almost supported life was Lalande 2, which was a tidally locked, high-gravity, mineral-rich hellhole. The only place more inhospitable was Proxima, with its frozen wastes and toxic oceans.
‘And Rannu’s gone ahead?’
Morag and Pagan nodded. I wanted to ask what he was doing. I wanted to ask if they had protocols for meeting him, but I did not trust the environment so this wasn’t the place.
‘Are you happy that I handle the security element?’ I asked Pagan and just about in time remembered to look at Morag as well. I left it unsaid that I was assuming they were planning some kind of witchcraft for the mission and would have their own information warfare agenda. It was Morag who nodded. ‘And I’m assuming that we’re all broadly on the same page as regards our general objectives?’
Fuck up the enemy as much as possible and see if we can learn anything while doing it. What would be more difficult was coming up with a way to safely transmit any useful intelligence back. The pair of them nodded again.
‘No,’ said Mudge.
‘You’ll like it,’ I assured him.
He seemed happy with that.
Morag tapped me on the head. ‘There’s something in there I want,’ she said. I guessed she was talking about the information exchange between myself and whatever was calling itself Nuada in the mind of Them.
‘I’m getting a little tired of being poked and prodded, and you couldn’t find anything before but you’re welcome to try again. I’ve got something for you.’
I found the file that Vicar had given me in his sanctuary and tried to send it to Pagan and Morag. It bounced. Both of them were looking at me like I was an idiot.
‘You’re in an information quarantine,’ Morag said, using the tone that young people like to use when their elders are being stupid.
‘Where’s it from?’ Pagan asked.
I told him. Even Mudge looked at me seriously when I mentioned Vicar’s name. His camera eyes revolving one way and then the other in their sockets.
‘He’s alive?’ Pagan asked. I could hear the emotion in his voice.
I shook my head. Pagan covered his eyes with his hands. He hadn’t been this emotional before but I think he’d prepared himself that time. The hope that I’d hinted at was just a bit too much for him. I hadn’t realised they were so close. I felt like an utter shit at my pang of jealousy as Morag gently pulled Pagan’s head down towards her shoulder and held him. Through the jealousy I managed to wonder how someone who’d had her life managed to care about other people. Where had she learned that?
‘I’m all right,’ Pagan finally said.
I decided to spare him the grizzly details, which conveniently meant omitting who it was that actually killed him.
Morag let Pagan go and grabbed a double jack cable and moved towards me.
‘You’re not supposed to-’ Pagan started.
I guessed there was some kind of protocol involving a separate and isolating device, but it was too late. I felt the disconcerting click of the jack being slid into one of the four plugs on the back of my neck. Somehow it felt even more intimate than the kiss. Hopefully it wouldn’t be followed by a punch. I saw the notification of the connection on my IVD. I sent the file. The connection was severed. Morag concentrated for a moment.
‘It’s fine,’ she told Pagan. ‘I knew he wouldn’t poison me.’
Pagan admonished her for not following proper procedure. He then demonstrated it by having her put the file into a stand-alone system, where they used the touch screen controls on the monitor to run a diagnostic on it before Pagan jacked in and stored it in his internal systems as well.
I wasn’t paying that much attention. Morag had left me a text when we’d connected. I wished I’d thought of something like that but then I probably wouldn’t have known what to say. On the other hand, I really hoped it wasn’t a revenge virus. This was a black op; I briefly wondered if they had access to slaveware. I decided to trust her and open the message. Besides, I was pretty sure that slaveware would come in a much bigger file. It simply said, ‘You’re an arsehole but I missed you.’ I think I must have sagged as the tension drained from me. Morag glanced up at me and then turned away smiling. I found Mudge looking at me, grinning.
Yeah, I felt much better. Except for the guilt about sleeping with Fiona.
‘Mudge,’ Pagan started. Mudge’s head jerked around and his lenses refocused on him. ‘You filming now?’ Pagan asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Okay, you can’t do that. It’s a huge security risk.’
‘I’ve got a kill switch set up with extensive parameters on it. Anything happens to me, it runs a firestorm through my memory. I can also trigger it with a thought. Then of course I tell them everything I know because they’ll probably torture me and I can’t think that’d be good, probably quite painful.’
I was smiling at this. Pagan looked like he was getting ready to lecture.
‘Don’t exaggerate, Mudge,’ I said. ‘You’d sell us out for some good weed.’
Mudge pretended to give this some thought. ‘That’s unfair, man. Maybe some good coke or a mind-blowing psychotropic, depending on my mood.’
‘Look, this is very amusing but he’s a-’ Pagan started.
‘He’ll be fine,’ I assured Pagan, who didn’t look very assured.
‘People keep on forgetting what I do for a living. I’m not just another numpty with a gun. You do your job and let me do mine. You might see me as a risk but believe me, it’s just as important. Or do you want this place to remain secret? Sharcroft to remain secret?’ Suddenly Mudge wasn’t playing the stoned buffoon.
Pagan still looked unconvinced. Morag put a hand on his arm.
‘How can you doubt him?’ she asked.
‘He told all last time.’
‘Look, I’m as unhappy about it as everyone else-’ I started.
‘Bollocks, you love it,’ Mudge interrupted.
‘But his timing was good. Though that does remind me. If we’re going into a high-surveillance environment-’
‘Possibly total surveillance,’ Pagan said.
