star.’
‘Go and fuck yourself!’ Trace spat. We weren’t accomplishing anything, but on the other hand the guy was a prick and didn’t mean us well so we may as well let Mudge go to town on him.
Mudge leaned forward. ‘What did you get caught doing when God came to town?’ His manner was all mock concern. ‘Embezzlement? Too much crystal? Too much time in the sense booths? Fucking the boss’s kid? A penchant for farmyard frolics? Coprophilia? Has to be a weakness because it’s never going to be about being crooked or without morals, is it?’ Trace was going the kind of scarlet that only people who have been speaking to Mudge for any period of time can go. Judging by the response, Mudge must have been getting close to the heart of the matter. Just another person we’d reached out and touched. I glanced up at the lasers nervously.
‘Mudge, why don’t you give it a rest?’ Cat said. Her voice was heavy with implied threat. ‘Look, asshole,’ she continued diplomatically. ‘You’re only choice is take the money or we break him out. Don’t you want the cash? It’s a lot of fucking money.’ I couldn’t tell if she was bargaining, pleading or threatening.
‘I have to admit I was actually surprised by the size of Sharcroft’s offer to the company and my own gratuity. Sadly this ups the value of your brother as a prisoner so we’ll keep him to bargain for something important.’ I glanced over at Cat but she was staring at Trace. I almost groaned when I heard Mudge’s voice again. It seemed like he wasn’t going to be happy until someone got killed.
‘You did a profit-and-loss projection. Didn’t you?’ Mudge asked. Suddenly we were talking about something else. I wasn’t sure if it was the conversation or Mudge’s train of thought I wasn’t following. I watched Trace swallow several times as he sought to control himself. The calmness that spread over his features looked like it was narcotic. It would be drug-administered from his internal reservoirs, the sort execs use to calm themselves in the boardroom.
‘I think our meeting is over,’ Trace said, then to his guards: ‘Please see them to their new jobs.’
We didn’t move. Pre-violence tension just kept building. I tried calculating our chances. I didn’t like the rotary laser element.
Trace turned to Morag. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’ It was a threat.
He was dead. Well he was dead if the lasers and the guards didn’t get me first. I just wished I didn’t feel like I was moving in slow motion. I scratched at the inhibitor jack in one of my neck plugs. Pointlessly; metal and plastic didn’t have any nerve endings.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Morag protested. I wasn’t sure how seriously she was taking this. I think hanging around with us was making her a little too blase.
‘You did a profit-and-loss forecast based on the coming conflict. You modelled who would win, or more likely who would pay more. Do the Earth governments know?’ Mudge asked. Now I saw it.
‘If someone like you could work it out, what do you think? What? You think they’re going to stop dealing with us? They need our resources. They’re preparing for war.’
‘Fucking parasite,’ Cat muttered.
‘You’re a collaborator?’ I asked incredulously. I don’t know why I was surprised. It was all flies to shit.
‘Oh grow up,’ he sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. ‘Your schoolboy revolutionary act is no doubt great fun, but adults run the system and business is the fuel. Now go and get slaved like the good little victims you are before I have your flesh turned to steam.’
Something unpleasant occurred to me. ‘Why not just kill us?’ I asked.
‘Because we’ll make a nice little gift when Rolleston and his friends come in-system,’ Mudge said.
‘You want to hand us to them?’ Morag demanded. Trace didn’t answer, but for a moment I saw his concentration waver as if he was listening to someone else. Then he was with us again.
‘Because he’s begging for favours,’ Mudge added. ‘Because despite business models and all that other bollocks, he knows that Rolleston, Cronin and their friends are going to fucking eat him. Don’t you, little man?’
I wondered if it was the little man comment that tipped it. I saw it; Cat saw it; Mudge would have seen it; and I guessed Morag had been through enough of this shit with us to know what was coming next. The decision to kill us was written all over Trace’s face. I wondered how Mudge thought we were going to get out of this.
It went black. Then the lights flickered so quickly they were almost strobing. My flash compensators kicked in and I saw the look of surprise on Trace’s face. Fortunately he was surprised enough not to give the kill order to the lasers.
Then God started screaming.
9
Trace’s expression changed from shock to fury. He looked up. It was clear to him that whatever was happening was our fault. Morag fainted and hit the plush carpet as I started to move towards Trace. With the inhibitor jack in one of my plugs I felt like I was wading through mud to get to him. Inhibited though I was, the barrels on the lasers rotating up to speed still looked like slow motion to me. This just meant that I’d get to see my death more clearly.
My flash compensators saved me from going blind from the red light as it stabbed out. Then the room was full of red steam and we were covered from head to foot in very hot blood. The four security guards looked like they’d been cut in two and had then exploded. Their superheated flesh was still bubbling and steaming. The carpet was on fire. The multiple barrels of the rotary laser were still spinning but no longer firing. They stopped. The sprinklers came on.
Trace was on the other side of his desk looking devastated. I was a little surprised myself. I reached down to pick up one of the M-19s but it came apart in my hand. It had been cut in two.
Trace was drawing a pistol from inside his suit jacket. It looked very shiny and expensive. Mudge had one of the guards’ sidearms a long time before Trace completed the draw.
‘Mudge, no!’ Cat shouted pointlessly. Mudge fired a burst at point-blank range into Trace’s face, which caved in on itself. Mudge was grinning but he looked angry as well.
God was still screaming. It sounded like a thousand voices crying out in agony. The noise was messing with my normally calm demeanour.
‘What the fuck?!’ I demanded of Mudge. He looked like a full-on psycho, covered in blood and laughing in the flickering light.
‘Fuck him. He was an arsehole,’ Mudge said. I only heard him because my dampeners cut through the unnerving sound of God’s screams. Cat and Pagan were right – we were a mess and Mudge was out of control.
I was struggling to sort out what was happening. I was sure I could hear gunfire. Maybe human screams mingling with God’s own.
Cat was checking the guards’ weapons. Another M-19 had been bisected but two of them were fine.
The locks on my shoulder and knuckles sprang off. The inhibitor jack went offline and the world sped up. I picked the inhibitor jack out of my neck plug.
Morag came to and sat up. She was looking around appalled at the carnage.
‘Did you do this?’ I asked her. She looked like she was going to ask for forgiveness even though she’d saved us. Instead she just nodded. She looked sick at what she’d done. ‘Morag!’ I demanded. Her head whipped round to look at me. Then she remembered she hated me. Her remorse gone, the blood and the light made her look somehow evil.
‘It was a secure network but he was communicating with it wirelessly,’ she said. ‘As soon as I knew that, I knew I could hack it.’
Except that you weren’t supposed to be able to hack heavy-duty corporate secure networks and take over their security systems that quickly. Even I knew that.
Cat handed me an M-19 and I passed it to Mudge. I took two of the guards’ sidearms. I was the only ambidextrous shooter and I had a feeling we were going to need to maximise our firepower. Both pistols were shitty little ten mils. Morag had another of the ten mils and we took all the ammo and grenades for the M-19s’ grenade launchers we could carry. Mudge was disgusted to find that all the grenades were stun baton rounds. It
