‘Them biotech, maybe some transgenic,’ he said. His icon wouldn’t meet my eyes.
‘Transgenic? Hybridisation?’
He shrugged. ‘Yes, on animals.’
‘On people?’ I demanded. I was angry but not at Pagan. Pagan nodded.
‘Does that mean more people like Gregor?’ Morag asked. I think she sounded a little afraid.
‘Potentially a lot more,’ Pagan said. ‘But earlier proto-versions.’
‘That’s reassuring,’ Mudge said.
‘Don’t shoot the messenger,’ Pagan said. He was right. ‘Besides, I don’t think they’ll be as formidable as the current iteration. You know, the ones like Rolleston.’
He was also right about that. If they were all like Rolleston then I wasn’t even sure how we were going to kill them. There was some muttering.
‘We got a reason to go in there?’ Merle asked. He was trying to nod at the image of the Citadel but I don’t think his icon was co-operating.
‘I don’t know,’ Pagan said. ‘There’s evidence -’ he brought up some more information that looked like computer system schematics ‘- of an internal sub-system which the truly paranoid could use to hide information and develop plans.’
‘So you have to get in and out of that without being noticed and hack an unhackable AI? Seems simple,’ Merle said.
‘We’re going to try and find an easier way.’ Pagan sounded a little exasperated.
‘We’ve done really stupid things before,’ Mudge said.
‘I know. I saw the highlights. Look, it sounds like we could spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for you guys to develop software.’
I shook my head. ‘If it’s not going our way then we’ve got a whole list of secondary objectives we can go for depending on the situation on the ground.’
‘Under it,’ Cat said. Nobody lived on the surface in Lalande.
‘Intelligence-gathering, getting the truth out, assassination and sabotage, which is what Sharcroft thinks we’re doing,’ said Pagan.
‘He doesn’t know?’ I asked.
‘About wanting to hack Demiurge? He might guess we want to, but he doesn’t know that we may be close to it being a realistic option.’
‘He just thinks we’ll be causing trouble? Going after their infrastructure?’ Merle asked.
‘But that means killing a lot of innocent people,’ I said, meaning all the people who would quite reasonably have been taken in by the Squadrons’ versions of events. I thought back to Vladimir.
‘Can’t we shoot to wound?’ Morag said weakly. The others looked uncomfortable. It wasn’t an option and I think she knew it. You shoot someone, especially someone augmented, you had to make sure they were dead or they were just going to get up and shoot you back.
‘You’d all best come to terms with killing anyone who gets in our way,’ Merle said. ‘Otherwise you’ll get us killed.’
‘We’ll do it, but we don’t have to like it,’ I said.
It was the same as any other human war, I guessed. People who never reached the front line made the decisions and got people like us to go and kill each other.
‘If we go after the infrastructure,’ Pagan continued, ‘the Citadel would be a valid target.’
‘Why?’ Mudge asked.
‘Because if it’s a biotech facility it could be used to augment more of the Squadron’s people to become like Rolleston,’ I told him.
‘Hitting that place will not be easy,’ Merle said somewhat redundantly.
‘Harder than making whipped cream by sitting in a giant bowl of milk with a whisk up your arse?’ Mudge asked.
I turned to stare at him, Merle ignored him and Pagan just sighed.
‘Also we should try and link with resistance fighters if there are any…’ the ageing hacker said, trying to continue.
‘There will be,’ Merle said.
‘The Black Squadrons will tell them we’re the bad guys,’ Morag pointed out.
‘You don’t know these people. I’ve dealt with the Cabal, though I didn’t know it then. The whole reason they do what they do is because they’re control freaks. They may control the info but they’ll try to push people around. Those people, especially in the New Zealand settled zones, will push back.’ What Merle was telling us was thin but it was also the closest thing we’d heard to good news throughout this briefing. ‘A lot of this seems to be make-it- up-as-we-go-along-once-we-hit-the-ground.’
‘We’re jumping blind. Never been in the army?’ I asked.
‘Marines and air force mainly.’
‘Rannu’ll tell us more when we meet. Rendezvous with him,’ Morag said. I hoped that would happen as well but it sounded naive even to my ears.
‘That’s pretty risky, Morag,’ Cat said. Pagan had set up rendezvous points and times with Rannu. ‘It looks like a lot of the initial missions were compromised.’
‘Maybe, but Rannu’s good,’ Morag said, trying to keep the hope out of her voice.
‘We check,’ I said. We owed him that. I owed him that. I’d left Gregor too long. Merle and Cat protested. ‘Carefully,’ I added.
‘You’ve done a lot of questioning, Cabal-boy,’ Mudge said. ‘What are you bringing?’
Merle managed to turn his shit icon’s head and stare at him for a while. Then the icon smiled. It looked more like a grimace.
‘Oh I’m the native guide. I know the land. A large network of contacts, many of whom will have been compromised, some of whom I just can’t see co-operating, but if they’ve been slaved then who knows.’
‘That it? Well I’m fucking impressed. Guess you were worth the trouble,’ Mudge said dismissively. There was something I was missing in this conversation. I also couldn’t work out why Morag was smiling.
‘Also Cemetery Wind set up a series of caches all over the Twilight Strip.’ Merle tapped his head. ‘I know where all the goodies are hidden.’ This was our second piece of good news. There was only so much gear we were going to be able to jump with.
‘Why are they doing this?’ Morag asked. I sensed her naivety was not doing her any favours in Merle’s eyes.
‘Its just power and greed, same as it ever was,’ I said.
‘I get that,’ she said sharply. ‘But that was the Cabal, right? Why does Rolleston suddenly want to be god- emperor of the universe? Doesn’t it seem a little… I don’t know, like a viz story or something?’
Actually she had a point. Rolleston had always fitted my idea of the good servant. Suddenly he wanted to be a dictator.
‘Maybe it’s all on Cronin?’ I suggested, now less sure she was being naive.
‘I think they really believe that they know better,’ Pagan said. ‘That the strong have the right to rule. They’re true believers, fanatics.’
As he spoke glyphs were appearing and disappearing in front of him as he scrolled though the information on the holographic display. He found what he was looking for and opened the file. At first it was a lot of scientific- looking stuff, equations and chemical signs, that sort of thing. I was irritated with him. He knew this would mean nothing to us. What was he doing – trying to highlight our ignorance? Then I realised that I was looking at an incomplete, partially corrupted and highly classified personnel file. It was Rolleston’s. I looked at his birth date. He was more than ninety years old.
‘Fuck,’ Mudge said. ‘You’d think he’d have got higher than major.’
‘If he’d got higher than major then he wouldn’t be so hands on. He wouldn’t get the chance to fuck people up himself,’ I said as I tried to concentrate on the information in front of me.
He had been an exemplary officer in the Royal Marine Commandos and then the SBS. Then even shadier black ops stuff. I could see why the Cabal had chosen him. It seemed like no matter how hard the objective was he got it done, but there was a lot of information missing. Like everything before the marines.
