Veteran (59 page)

He lit a cigarette for me. Again I was determined to smoke it even though I knew it meant coughing up blood. How stupid am I? I managed to hold it between my lips and inhale a bit before Balor had to take it away. I must’ve looked awful. I was pretty much a hollow sack of skin full of disintegrating internal organs and machinery. The strange thing was, it wasn’t pity or sympathy or disgust I saw on Balor’s face, it was resolve and something else, maybe fear. I took a sip from the whisky; it didn’t even taste nice any more. It just hurt. What a waste.

‘What’s this, my wake?’ I asked. He didn’t smile. That worried me.

‘You’re going to die,’ he said.

‘No shit,’ I replied, wondering where this was going and getting ready to call for help.

‘You shouldn’t have to die like this,’ he said. I said nothing; I just stared at him. He drew his dive knife from its ankle sheath and placed it on the table next to the automed. Next he drew the shotgun pistol and placed that on the table. Finally he took an antique, stainless-steel pill box from the pocket of his cut-off combat trousers and placed that on the table as well. I looked at the three items and then back up at Balor.

‘Everyone feels sorry for you but nobody is prepared to do anything about it,’ he said. I struggled to sit up. If Mudge was going to get me up for the job it had better be one hell of a drug cocktail. I looked him straight in his one good reptile-styled lens.

‘I’m going to die on the job just like everyone else,’ I said. ‘If I wanted to be killed I’d do it myself. Understand?’ Balor said nothing for what seemed like a very long time. He was gauging me, sizing me up, trying to come to a decision.

‘What ...’ he began, and then stopped.

‘What if I’m too weak to do my job?’ I finished for him. He nodded. ‘I’m dead anyway, so you don’t have to worry about looking out for me, but if I can pull a trigger I’ll help where we’re going. But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it?’

Balor shook his head, his sensor dreads whipping round as his head moved. ‘I don’t like seeing a warr—’

‘Soldier,’ I interrupted. He looked at me quizzically. ‘I am, or I was, a soldier, and a reluctant one at that. Don’t give me any of this warrior bullshit; you save it for Rannu.’

‘I don’t like seeing a soldier this way,’ he said. I managed another sip from the whisky and then refilled the glass with some of my blood. I looked back up at Balor, sitting huge and impassive next to my bed.

‘You’re really scared of me, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘I mean this.’ I gestured down at my sore-covered wreck of a body. ‘This is pretty much your worst fear, isn’t it?’

He didn’t say anything. It hit me then that like all the other soldiers who dressed themselves up like monsters, Balor was overcompensating, running from something, hiding from something. He was just better at it than the rest.

‘Why are you here?’ I asked. ‘Out of all of us you’ve got to have the most to lose - maybe Mudge now, but he’s too fucked to care.’

‘Loyalty,’ he said.

‘Oh bullshit. You want to do a dying man a favour then, don’t fucking lie to me.’

He glared at me. I think I’d made him angry, and not the mock anger he play-acted with his cronies; I’d genuinely hit a raw nerve.

‘Because I think we’ve changed something,’ he finally said through gritted rows of shark-like teeth.

‘You don’t sound pleased about it,’ I replied.

‘I am. It’s why we’re warriors after all,’ he said. I didn’t follow him but I was sick of hearing all this warrior self-justification bollocks.

‘Don’t fucking start with that warr—’ I began.

‘No, you be quiet,’ Balor said. ‘I don’t care what you think of my beliefs, but is that not what all the fighting and killing was for? Isn’t that why all those marines on Atlantis had to die? Aren’t we trying to make things better? Isn’t that our job as the strong? Isn’t that what you told Cronin?’ he snarled. ‘The world without war, the world you’re trying to build, has no place for someone like me,’ he said finally. That stopped me.

‘What about Rolleston and the Black Squadrons?’ I asked weakly.

‘Believe it or not,’ he said evenly, ‘despite what you’ve seen me do, I don’t really have much of an appetite for killing humans.’

‘You’ve come here to die?’ I asked.

‘No. I’ve come here to die in a way that people will talk about for ever.’

‘You want to go out in a blaze of glory,’ I said.

He nodded. ‘That is why, more than anyone else, Mudge must live.’

‘So he can tell your story.’ Balor nodded. ‘And you don’t want me around because despite what you’ve done to your body and your head, you don’t want to be reminded that you are still human and human flesh is weak,’ I said.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t need to.’

‘I’m worried that you will risk the mission—’

‘You’re on a fucking suicide run, pal. You don’t give a shit about the others - you’ve just fucking said that. You know the score. You know how we do business. What’s your motto, by guile not strength? We’re going in quiet and you want to make a fucking spectacle of your death!’

‘I’m trying to offer you a way out,’ he growled.

‘What’s going on?’ Morag asked from the open doorway. I hadn’t even heard her, though Balor must have. Neither of us said anything. For no good reason I suddenly felt guilty. I think I saw a trace of guilt on Balor’s face too, but who can tell? Morag took in the gun, the knife and the pill box.

‘What were you doing?’ she demanded, asking us both.

‘Nothing,’ I said.

Morag turned to glare at Balor. Balor stood up, his enormous scaled bulk seeming to fill the cramped cabin. Morag moved into the room, Balor towering over her.

‘Were you going to kill him?’

‘I offered him a way out,’ he growled again. Morag looked angrier than I’d ever seen her.

‘A way out? A fucking way out!’ she screamed at him. ‘Why can’t you say kill, or even better, murder?’

‘Morag ...’ I started, but she’d grabbed Balor’s shotgun pistol and held the heavy pistol in an unsteady two-handed grip. Balor reached out to take the pistol. The report was deafening in the confined space. Or at least it would have been if we didn’t all have audio dampeners now. The recoil sent Morag sprawling back into the bulkhead, the gun clattering to the deck. Buckshot was suddenly ricocheting all around me, flattening against my subcutaneous armour. There was a black scorch mark on Balor’s chest from the pistol’s fierce muzzle flash. He barely took a step back. She’d shot him in exactly the same place that Rolleston had. Scorched his nice new rebuilt armour.

‘I’m sorry,’ Morag said, much more out of shock at what she’d done than fear of Balor. Balor bent down and retrieved the shotgun pistol and grabbed his dive knife and pill box from the table. I don’t think this had played out the way he’d envisaged. It was difficult to tell with his inhuman face but I think he was embarrassed. Mudge and Rannu were at the door. Rannu had removed the medpak; half of his face was angry red new-growth skin. He had a gun in each hand and Pagan was behind him. Balor made to push past them.

‘Balor,’ I said quietly.

He stopped and turned to look at me.

‘Balor, if I live long enough I’ll go down with you.’ He gave this some thought and then nodded before turning. Mudge and Pagan moved out of the way. Rannu just stared at him.

‘Don’t say that,’ Morag said through gritted teeth. I suspected there would be tears in her eyes if she’d still had real ones.

‘Is everything okay?’ Rannu asked, almost tonelessly.

‘Yeah, we’re fine,’ I said, but Rannu did not move.

‘Get out of the way,’ Balor said dangerously. Rannu still didn’t move.

‘Everything’s fine,’ Morag said.

Rannu moved aside for Balor, who glared at him one last time and then stormed off.

‘Thank you,’ Morag said to Rannu and the others. Mudge started to say something but she closed the door. She threw herself onto the bed next to me, causing me some pain, and then burst into tears. Or rather she started sobbing, no tears any more. I held her as best as my decaying flesh could manage.

‘That bastard,’ she managed later through the sobs.

‘I think he honestly thought he was doing me a favour. He’s scared, he’s just not scared of the same things the rest of us are.’ She looked up at me, her brown eyes no longer up to the job of conveying emotion. I struggled to look at them.

‘I’m not afraid,’ she said, and I think I believed her.

‘No?’ I asked. She shook her head. ‘Why not?’ In comparison I was shitting myself.

‘I know you’ll protect me,’ she replied with utter conviction.

‘I thought you didn’t need my protection,’ I said, my mouth working faster than my brain.

‘We both need protection,’ she said. Despite the pain I held her to me, my eyes hurting where my machinery prohibited tears.

A day out from Sirius and Gregor was still in a cocoon. All we’d been able to do was speculate. We’d not been able to come up with a solid plan, let alone run simulations. Though in this case I suspected the simulations would have been quite depressing, in a you’re-all-going-to-die kind of way.

The door to the dying room, as I’d come to think of my cabin, opened. Morag and Pagan walked in. Pagan leant heavily on his staff; both of them looked thoughtful. They looked at each other, both seemingly waiting for the other to start. They seemed to be in a state of mild nerd excitement.

‘We need to speak to Gregor,’ Pagan said.

‘Or turn back,’ I said. An option which was beginning to look pretty good even to me, and I had nothing to lose, or rather I did but I’d already lost it.

‘Morag has had an idea,’ Pagan said. I turned to her expectantly.

‘We
had an idea,’ Morag said.

‘Well it was more of—’ Pagan began.

‘Move on,’ I suggested.

‘Gregor still has his interface plugs,’ Morag pointed out. ‘We drill through the cocoon and insert a port into him and talk to him in the net.’

‘Can’t you do it wirelessly?’ I asked.

Pagan shook his head. ‘We’ve been trying. Whatever internal ware he uses as a receiver is not accepting incoming transmissions.’

‘And you can’t override it?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Possibly, but I don’t know how much is normal ware and how much is Themtech, and I’m assuming you know what happens to people who try to hack Themtech?’

‘They end up like Vicar?’ I said.

‘At best, and I don’t want to end up like him.’

I looked over at Morag. ‘Wouldn’t you be more compatible?’

Morag opened her mouth to answer but Pagan got there first.

‘Possibly, but if we drill into the cocoon then there’s no risk.’

‘To you perhaps, but it might trigger off some kind of defence system. If that thing is transforming then what’s to say you’ll even be able to find the port?’

‘We’re sending it through on a modified snake,’ Morag answered. Snakes were remotely controlled delivery devices for monofilament fish-eye cameras, old technology. Most people used mites or crawlers these days, but most special forces types still had them around in case they came in useful.

‘Okay, but what’s to say you won’t harm Gregor?’ I asked. ‘The cocoon is after all a protective casing, I’m guessing.’

Both of them weren’t sure what to say. ‘We need to know,’ Morag finally asserted. ‘He shouldn’t have cocooned himself without telling us what the plan was.’

‘Agreed, but if we kill him, we’ll never know,’ I said.

‘So we turn around, which we’re already considering anyway,’ Pagan replied. I fixed him with a glare from my lenses.

‘He’s still a friend of mine,’ I reminded him, though I’m guessing my near corpse-like appearance made me less scary than I used to be.

‘Understood, but he seemed pretty robust. He is after all part alien killing machine. When we get to Sirius we’re not going to be able to hang around for too long, stealth or no stealth. If They don’t find us, the Cabal will.’ He was overstating the point; finding a ship in something as big as space was actually quite difficult.

‘What are you looking for, my permission?’ I asked. Both of them looked a little guilty. ‘You’ve already decided to do this.’ Pagan nodded. I sighed. ‘Fine,’ I said, a little pissed off. ‘Can you at least make sure I’m there when you talk to him?’

‘That’s kind of why we’re here,’ Morag said. She moved over to the bed and, as gently as she could, rolled me over. I found myself staring at the bulkhead. This saved me from having to see the grimace on Morag’s face when she saw my bedsore-covered back, the bleeding sores from the radiation sickness, and smelled the rank smell of someone dying. I felt her plug in the wireless net interface.

‘We’ll call when we’re ready,’ she said and the pair of them left.

The net was tiny on the
Spear.
Strictly speaking, it could have been any size, but it only existed in the
Spear’s
own systems. The net representation of the ship was odd. I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a skeletal spearhead or the long skull of some kind of mythical beast. Symbols, not unlike the veves Papa Neon used, were inscribed in the bone, though they would change, morphing into other symbols as you looked at them. This was encrypted information from the ship’s operating systems. A huge and largely featureless desert surrounded the net representation of the
Spear
- presumably this was to symbolise space. The sky was a beautiful rendering of a desert sunset. Different virtual areas of the ship were represented as smooth caves of bone. In one of these caves Morag and Pagan had set up the pub environment that they’d built from Gregor’s subconscious. It looked a little weird among all the polished bone.

The icon I had was actually a pretty good rendering of me, if I’d had no cybernetics or radiation poisoning. This time I thought to check in the mirror behind the bar what colour Morag had made my eyes. She’d made them green; it didn’t look right.

Gregor’s icon was similar to mine, a good rendition of him back when he was human,
sans
cybernetics. I was relieved to see he wasn’t a Smiler any more. I guess irrational tribal allegiances die hard. Morag was there. She was Black Annis again. I think I’d preferred the Maiden of Flowers or whoever the prettier one had been. Pagan was there in his Druidic icon. All of them were sitting at a table in the centre of the otherwise deserted bar. I walked over and joined them. There was already a glass of virtual whisky on the table. I took a sip; it was well programmed but ultimately pointless.