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‘See you soon, Jakob,’ Rolleston said. His image blinked off. Why’d he single me out? I thought irrationally.

‘God, can you get him back up?’ I asked, all business now. In answer God brought up an image from a landing-pad lens two floors above us. We watched the docking arm reach out to the sleek and violent-looking, next-generation assault shuttle.

God cut to the security lens in the docking arm. The Major and the Grey Lady striding down the corridor. Josephine put her laser carbine to her shoulder and the picture disappeared. Cut to another lens and the same thing happened. It seemed that the Major and the Grey Lady had had quite enough publicity for one day.

As Mudge continued presenting the machinations, as he called them, of the Cabal system-wide, I followed the progress of the Major and Bran. They systematically destroyed or jammed every comms and surveillance device they found as they made their way down to Cat’s security people on the other side of what now felt like a very thin security shield.

They killed the crawlers we’d sent out, destroyed lenses and finally set up a white-noise transmitter. The last image we had of them was of Rolleston arguing with Cat while her people watched. They looked ready to step in if it got nasty. Josephine was just looking at the security screen covering the front of the node. Somehow it felt like she was looking through the lens and through me. Again I felt fear above and beyond the anticipation of combat.

27

Atlantis

‘Sergeant MacDonald?’ The voice was American, northern states. It sounded like someone was trying to spread a veneer of culture and corporate elocution lessons over street roots. I saw Gregor turn to look up at the viz screen; even on his warped features the look of disgust was unmistakeable. On the screen was a handsome, well-groomed young man in an immaculate understated suit that screamed upper-echelon corp. The giveaway was the sheathed antique katana held casually in his left hand.

Everything about his appearance was perfect, from his hair to the duelling scars. God was providing a biography for this guy. I downloaded it onto my internal visual display but still only managed to catch the highlights. His name was Vincent Cronin. He’d grown up in one of the more Darwinian neighbourhoods of Detroit and excelled in cash generation for one of the more successful gangs. He’d been drafted into a relatively prestigious American airborne unit and seen action on Lalande. He’d worked his way through the ranks, played the system – first degree, commission to officer, some clever investments – and there’d been a corp job waiting back in the world. By all accounts he applied the same natural selection skills he’d learnt in the street to the boardroom. More than twenty-five dead execs by his sword. More importantly he was canny, good at business, as well as hell on wheels with a sword.

Now he was an executive without a portfolio. Reading between the lines he was the Cabal’s corp liaison, their fixer. He solved the problems that didn’t require Rolleston’s violent attention.

I saw Cronin smile. It was the sort of smile that would put people at ease, though I couldn’t help but think there was a predatory quality to it. He seemed to be sitting in the lobby of some kind of plush comfortable-looking hotel.

Standing not far away from him was the muscle. The guy was huge, as big as Balor, but nominally human-looking though his features were a mismatching patchwork collection of ugliness. His eyes were lenses but seemed to bulge out like a fish’s, and he had a very pronounced, forward-jutting jaw. He wore an expensive and well-tailored suit that he looked very uncomfortable in. A Hawaiian shirt beneath the suit jacket and a large trilby finished the ensemble. Everything about him screamed cybernetic-induced psychosis, not least his dress sense. I don’t think I would’ve liked to fight this guy. I wasn’t even sure I’d want Gregor or Balor to fight him. He stood a little way from Cronin, constantly scanning the surrounding area. He was paying no attention whatsoever to the events unfolding on the viz screen.

I downloaded the muscle’s bio. It filled me with disgust. He’d been US special forces, spent his time on Lalande as well. Possibly that was where he’d met Cronin, but he’d come back to spend time in a Green Beret counter-insurgency unit. Basically he killed humans. He’d been loaned out and cross-trained with the CIA’s Special Activities Section, their paramilitary black-ops wing. Just before he’d gone to work for Cronin he’d been in command of the Washington branch of the IRS’ elite SWAT audit team. He was a taxman. His name was Martin Kring.

‘Cronin, you piece of shit,’ Gregor hissed at the viz screen.

To your friends and everyone watching this I think it’s important that we all know that MacDonald is completely compromised by the alien entity that resides within his flesh. He works for the enemy. Whether or not that is the case with Miss McGrath I cannot say, though I suspect it is, but we studied MacDonald for over a year and he is definitely one of them.’

‘That’s bullshit!’ Gregor said.

‘Why, because you say so? Whatever you think of us, we have worked in humanity’s best interests-’

‘Funny, it looks like you’ve worked in your own best interests. Though even allowing for that I can’t imagine why you started the war,’ Mudge said.

‘I wasn’t even alive when the war started, and we only have your word for it that you think the people I work with had anything to do with it,’ Cronin said evenly.

‘My word? I’d call it a lot of evidence, but I would encourage people to check it for themselves.’

‘I’m not about to get into yet another argument about mediation with you. People are smart enough to see through these things. I’m sure any vet knows the self-evident truth about the nature of Them,’ Cronin said with a look of distaste on his face.

‘Or, you know, check out the evidence for themselves. What I don’t get though is why start the war in the first place? I mean, I could see that you and yours would make a lot of money investing in munitions, cyberware, shipbuilding, electronics and various other industries, but surely it was an insane thing to do? You couldn’t know you were going to beat them?’ Mudge asked.

‘Then surely you’ve answered your own question,’ Cronin said.

‘They’d studied Them,’ Gregor began. We all looked over at him and suddenly it was his face on the viz screen. He was being filmed through Mudge’s eyes. ‘They’re not at all like us, like you. The Cabal aren’t even sure if they’re sentient as such. They theorised that they could be some kind of organic neural net processor, a biological learning machine, but they learn by reaction. If you can control their stimuli then you can control their progress. Basically they would always meet force with a similar degree of force, because you were teaching Them how to fight as you went along,’ he finished.

‘They guaranteed a stalemate,’ I said. Gregor nodded.

‘And no biological warfare that would’ve wiped us out, no nuclear weapons etcetera, etcetera. Nobody would be allowed the tools they needed to win. They modelled it using the most powerful software they could find. They forecast all possible outcomes of the conflict until the odds were in their favour and the chances of Them winning were infinitesimal, and then made sure they kept back certain edges for themselves,’ he said.

‘What edges?’ Pagan asked. I glanced up at the screen. Cronin was listening intendy but showing no other reaction.

‘Early precursors to Crom-’ Gregor began.

‘Even out of the evidence you have manufactured there seems to be none to support the existence of this Crom virus you talk of,’ Cronin interrupted.

‘A more primitive version designed to kill rather than control,’ Gregor finished.