Veteran (44 page)

‘Seems you being weird-looking is funny no matter what race you are,’ I said, as I stubbed out my cigarette and took another pull of vodka. Mudge gave me the finger but he seemed to have relaxed.

‘Hey, is that my hip flask?’ he demanded.

‘Yep.’ I took another swallow of vodka and then Gregor reached over from what seemed like very far away and took the flask from my hand. We all watched as he drained the rest of the flask.

‘I think he’s working on instinct,’ Pagan said almost apologetically. I found it reassuring that there was that much of a squaddie left in him.

‘Can you speak to us?’ Pagan asked in his irritating, patronising tone. Gregor turned to look at him, his head seeming to swivel too far round. He opened his mouth and there was a squeal of distortion, as though through a microphone. His voice seemed to cycle through tones and possibly frequencies until it found one it liked and he started to sound more like Gregor again.

‘Of ... course ... I ... can ... fucking speak to you, I’m ... not ... fucking stupid.’ His head swivelled round at a disconcerting angle to look at me. ‘Who’s ... your mate?’ Mudge and I grinned. Though I think we both knew that this was not the Gregor we had known, that this was something completely different, he was in there somewhere.

I was getting used to oddness. Me, Mudge and Pagan sitting in a circle talking to a sea demon, a teenaged girl and an alien was beginning to feel commonplace. We let Gregor ease back into human communication by telling him a heavily abridged version of what was going on. He mostly stayed quiet, asking the occasional question. He seemed awkward with himself, even after Morag had found him a pair of Balor’s cut-off shorts and he’d tied them round his waist. I realised halfway through Pagan’s description of God, which I couldn’t be bothered to listen to, that he was ashamed of his alien-ness. Somehow that seemed reassuringly human, but I couldn’t think of anything to do that would make him or us feel better about this.

Gibby and Buck had returned about halfway through our brief. I wasn’t sure whether they’d been sent away in case they angered Gregor or had decided to not be around themselves, but when they returned Gregor stood up, or unfolded himself. Both Gibby and Buck had backed away, hands going to holstered antique revolvers at their sides. We’d calmed things down but Gregor still looked like he might eat either of them and they looked like they might bolt at any time.

‘Who’re the Cabal?’ I finally asked him, several hours later, when I was pretty sure that we’d exhausted our version of events.

‘The people who’ve done all this. The people who captured me and experimented on me,’ Gregor said. His voice, almost normal now, was lulling me into believing he was both human and my friend. ‘Basically a group of fat old rich guys. Invisible men, corporate old money, intelligence agency types, military and civil service high-ups.’

‘From where?’ Mudge asked.

‘Most anywhere, but mainly Europe and America, as far as I can tell.’

‘A conspiracy?’ Buck asked scornfully. Gregor swivelled his head round and looked at him with the black pools of his eyes, long enough to make the pilot feel very uncomfortable. Buck was opening his mouth to say something when Gregor answered.

‘I don’t think they see it that way. They don’t see they have anything to conspire for or against. They and people like them have always made the decisions, and that’s the way it is.’

‘A secret government then?’ I asked.

‘I don’t think it’s anything that prosaic. They’re just the doers for our society. Cabal is my word for them. I had to call them something to give them an identity, you know?’ Gregor said. It had to be the alien’s influence that was making this ex-squaddie who’d grown up on the streets of Stirling use words like prosaic.

‘Do we know who any of them are?’ I asked.

‘Rolleston,’ Gregor answered without hesitation. We nodded. ‘He’s the head of their security, handles all their dirty work. The others are somewhat distant. They communicate remotely or through intermediaries. Other than Rolleston, the only other one I’ve seen is a guy called Vincent Cronin. Must be in his late twenties or he looks it anyway, expensive suits, expensive ware, katana ...’

‘Which corp?’ Mudge asked. Anyone carrying a katana was normally an executive, a corporate samurai. A good executive had to prove himself in business and then duel for promotion. Rumour had it that for the top jobs the duels were to the death, blood on the conference-room floor. They only wanted people with the nerve to step up. If he was that young and carrying a katana, then he must not only be good, he would’ve had to have gambled big time and had it pay off.

‘I don’t think it’s that simple; he doesn’t appear to have a particular citizenship. He’s some kind of high-level fixer, executive without a portfolio. Rolleston handles all the dirty work and Cronin does all the organisational stuff.’

‘So we can assume this guy’s best of breed?’ Mudge said. Gregor nodded. It didn’t look right, his head seemed to bob elastically.

‘So they started the war?’ I asked.

‘I think so.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What did they want you for?’ Mudge asked.

‘For Their technology,’ Gregor answered. ‘I was a sample, then I was a test bed and finally I was a production facility.’

‘Military applications?’ I asked. Gregor shrugged. That didn’t look right either. I wondered if he still had what we would recognise as a skeleton.

‘I guess, but I think a lot of the Cabal is very old and very ill.’

‘So they want to use Their liquid ... biological whatever to help rejuvenate and generally increase their lifespan?’ Mudge said.

‘Possibly,’ Gregor said.

Something horrible occurred to me. ‘Their operators - Rolleston, the Grey Lady and the like - will they be augmented by Themtech?’ Gregor considered this.

‘I don’t know. It’s a possibility. They look normal so if they are augmented they must be a lot more sophisticated than me.’

‘No offence to your friend here, but he ain’t telling us shit,’ Balor said. It was the first time he’d really spoken. He’d spent most of his time staring at Gregor, who now swivelled his head round to look at the one-eyed pirate.

‘I was kind of busy being experimented on,’ Gregor said evenly.

‘And you’ve admitted that they can programme you,’ Buck said. I saw Gibby looking distinctly uncomfortable.

‘Yeah, it’s slightly less subtle than the way they control everyone else,’ Gregor said. I sat more upright in my chair, somewhat surprised at this insight. I gave it some thought.

‘I’m not fucking programmable,’ Balor said.

Gregor looked Balor right in the eye. ‘You used to serve,’ he said. I guessed he just didn’t understand the whole respect thing that Balor was supposed to command.

‘Did I?’ he asked. ‘That didn’t feel like what I was doing ...’

‘Fine, but it was what the rest of us were doing,’ I said. ‘Except Mudge.’

‘That doesn’t mean he’s not still controllable or under their control,’ Balor said.

‘He’s not,’ Morag said. ‘We dealt with that.’

‘Then who is in control, the alien or the man?’ Gibby asked.

‘Both,’ Gregor said. ‘And believe me I have more motivation than the rest of you to stay under my own control and deal with the Cabal.’

‘Besides,’ I added. ‘If he was still working for them, where are they? They’ve got no good reason for leaving us free.’

‘Deal with the Cabal?’ Buck asked. ‘How we supposed to deal with this Cabal if they’re as powerful as you say?’ It was a good point.

‘I don’t know,’ Gregor said. ‘But you will need to deal with them soon because they will want me back and they certainly can’t let knowledge of my existence leak.’

‘So let’s leak it,’ Mudge mused. Pagan looked over at him thoughtfully.

‘We need to release God,’ Morag said suddenly.

Pagan’s thoughtful expression suddenly disappeared. ‘It’s not ready.’

Morag wore a look of irritation on her face that said this wasn’t the first time they’d had this conversation. I took another mouthful of whisky from my tin mug. Mudge had produced a bottle of decent whisky. I think he’d stowed it to celebrate Gregor’s liberation. I’m not sure how celebratory Mudge was feeling about it now. I was mildly drunk, which wasn’t really helping the constant nausea but was giving it a sort of warm glow.

‘It is ready but it might not be perfect,’ Morag said. ‘And you didn’t see it.’ I had been wondering about this but the right time to broach it just never seemed to come up.

‘What happened to you in the facility’s net?’ I asked. All eyes turned to Morag, who shifted uncomfortably, not enjoying being the centre of attention suddenly, but there was something else. She was scared - not the general scared of doing dangerous things but real terror.

‘She overreacted to a very nasty security program,’ Pagan said.

‘Oh bullshit!’ Morag shouted at him.

Pagan sighed. ‘Look, Morag. Nobody’s saying that you haven’t come far and fast in a little time. You’re probably the most gifted hacker of your generation, but the fact is you’ve never been up against serious security with illegal black-attack programming. It cuts through your neural ware’s own defences and goes straight for the biofeedback.’

‘If she said she saw the devil then we should believe her,’ Rannu said. I thought this was creepy somehow.

‘You saw the devil?’ I asked. I knew Morag had been eagerly awaiting her first net-bound religious vision. It seemed unfortunate that it had been the devil.

‘When we entered the system they tried a purge, sent a firestorm program ahead of us. It was good but like any purge there’s always something left. We were sifting through the wreckage trying to get what we could ...’ Pagan said.

‘What did you get?’ I asked.

‘We’ll get to that,’ he said. ‘They’d left a particularly nasty security program in there to get us.’

‘It was more than that; it was like God ...’ Morag said.

‘Only evil,’ I suggested, smiling. Morag glared at me.

‘It was frightening, there’s no doubt about it,’ Pagan said. ‘It was sophisticated and dangerous.’

‘But you dealt with it?’ I asked. Pagan shook his head, his dreadlocks whipping from side to side.

‘No, it went for Morag first—’

‘Because it knew who the dangerous one was,’ Rannu said. I don’t think he was purposely trying to goad Pagan, but if he was he was doing a good job.

‘So we ejected,’ Pagan said, trying to ignore Rannu. I knew that they hadn’t gone back into the facility’s isolated net.

‘So you can’t be sure it was just a security program?’ I asked.

‘Look. Morag’s never been hit that hard and has become used to thinking that she’s invulnerable in the net. The thing rose out of the obsidian like some enormous bloody worm triggering just about every one of our conditioned fear triggers.’ He sounded exasperated. At the mention of the worm Gregor’s head had spun round to look at Pagan.

‘When you said "bloody worm" did you mean the worm was covered in blood?’ he asked. Pagan nodded. ‘You know the project name?’ Gregor asked.

‘Project Blackworm,’ Pagan said. ‘But I don’t see what that has to do with it.’

‘Can you tell us what you found in there?’ I asked.

‘Broadly speaking it confirms Gregor’s story,’ said Pagan. ‘The overall project is called Project Blackworm, which is presumably why the security looked the way it did. The project’s designed to harvest Their biotechnology for a number of different applications.’

‘Did it mention why they started the war?’ I asked. Pagan shook his head.

‘Did it mention the sub-projects?’ Gregor asked.

‘Yes,’ Pagan said.

‘Which are?’ I probed.

‘Project Crom and Project Demiurge,’ Pagan said.

‘It was Demiurge,’ Morag said.

‘Why would they leave Demiurge in a system they’ve purged and presumably abandoned?’ Pagan demanded irritably.

‘Then it was a fragment of Demiurge,’ Morag insisted.

‘Like you’re a fragment of God?’ Pagan said.

‘Guys?’ I interrupted.

‘Demiurge is the software application of Themtech,’ Pagan explained.

‘So?’ I asked.

‘So it’s as sophisticated as God and potentially as powerful, if not more so because they’ve got a lot more resources to throw at it.’

‘So what happens if Demiurge gets out into the net?’ I asked.

‘Same as if God got out, only presumably less benevolent. I’m guessing it would mean Gregor’s Cabal would control all information. The easy way, I mean,’ said Pagan.

‘How do we know they haven’t already released it and are in control?’ Mudge asked.

‘They haven’t. I’d know,’ Morag assured him.

Pagan glanced irritably over at her. ‘As far as we can tell they haven’t perfected it yet.’

‘Which is why we need to release God into the net as quickly as possible,’ Morag said.

Mudge looked very uncomfortable at this suggestion.

‘What’s Project Crom?’ I asked, forestalling what I suspected would be another argument.

‘As far as I can tell, it’s a viral weapon,’ Pagan said.

‘It’s an application of the control bionanites they used on me,’ Gregor answered.

‘What application?’ Mudge asked.

‘Basically infect, replicate, control,’ Gregor answered.

‘What?’ Mudge asked.

‘Them.’

‘All of Them?’ I asked incredulously. Gregor and Pagan nodded.

‘Are you talking about this Cabal taking total control of an entire alien race?’ Mudge asked.

‘Theoretically, yes,’ Pagan said. I noticed that Buck had a look of extreme concentration on his face.

‘I don’t think that should happen,’ the degenerate cyberbilly said. In many ways I was impressed with his grasp of the situation.

‘Delivery?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Pagan said. Gregor just shook his head but he still hadn’t quite mastered human body language.

‘So how do we stop it?’ Morag asked.

‘We?’ Buck asked. ‘Why is this our problem?’

‘You said you’d help,’ I reminded him, but I had to admit it seemed that we were dealing with things beyond our capabilities. With the best will in the world I don’t think we had either the skill set or the resources to deal with something like this. Besides, if they were looking hard enough they were going to find us sooner or later.