I watched Mudge dance by, singing along with some music he was listening to on his internal systems. He was naked and covered in body paint. That at least explained the unconscious airman on the bench opposite. It seemed I could sleep through anything.
‘Mudge?’
He turned to look at me. He seemed really jittery. He held out his hand as if he could take hold of me from the middle of the cargo hold, his hand grasping and relaxing.
‘We need more shooters,’ I told him. ‘Give it some thought.’ He nodded and then smiled.
I wasn’t sure if the escorts who took us from the airfield to Limbo were the same ones as before, as the entire security detail looked the same to me. They certainly didn’t seem happy to see us. Mudge being naked and blissed out hadn’t helped. Sometimes I felt that people didn’t take us seriously.
I was looking out of the window as we sank down into the silo. Mudge came over and put me in a playful headlock. He must have been coming down, as he was now able to communicate with us humans. Sadly.
‘Wow,’ he began. ‘You’re really going to have to eat some shit when we get there.’ Which is why I wasn’t looking forward to getting back to Limbo. ‘That’s going to be really humiliating.’
There was no point talking to him when he was like this.
7
I ended up carrying Mudge’s stuff. I agreed to be checked for God and surveillance but cheerfully refused to allow them to take my weapons and pointed out I had more than the last time I came. All the while Mudge was dancing around listening to music on his internal systems. He was still stark naked and covered in body paint. I let them check his gear. He just giggled whenever they tried to speak to him. Mudge certainly picked his time.
The Limbo staff just stared at the naked, painted, dancing Mudge as we entered the nerve centre, or what I had come to think of as the long metal mesh tube. Sharcroft advanced on me with the strange metallic, insectile gait of his life-support chair.
I pointed at him. ‘And you can fuck off.’ I threw two vials to one of his aides. One was a DNA swab and the other was blood. ‘That’s all you’re getting; don’t ask for more.’
‘Sergeant Douglas, may I remind-’ his modulated electronic voice started to say.
‘No, you may not. I’m going to speak to my people and find out what the score is. We’ll take objectives off you and all the resources we need; the rest goes dark for operational security.’
‘Breaking laws in the hot sun!’ Mudge shouted. I think it was supposed to be singing. It was very off-key.
‘So you’re taking over now?’ Morag asked.
I turned. I tried to ignore how good it felt to see her. Tried to ignore how good she looked with longer hair and in the white one-piece. Tried to ignore how nervous I suddenly felt.
Pagan stood next to her, looking out of place and uncomfortable without his staff and other accoutrements. I didn’t pay any attention to him. She looked me up and down, raising an eyebrow at my battered state.
‘I fought the law and the law won!’ Mudge shouted again. He advanced on Morag for a hug.
‘Mudge, you’re naked,’ she said by way of hello. Mudge gave her a hug and smeared body paint all over the front of her suit. ‘Och, you’ve made me all mucky!’
We all watched as Mudge boogied over to Pagan.
‘I approve of the body paint,’ Pagan said by way of a greeting and hugged Mudge, who then started dancing towards me.
‘See the way I diffused a potentially tense situation there through the medium of dance?’ he asked loudly as if talking over music in a club.
‘And nudity. That’s brilliant, Mudge. Thanks.’ He was getting closer. ‘Don’t hug me…’ Naked Mudge gave me a hug. Morag was laughing and Pagan was smiling.
‘So is your holiday over?’ Pagan asked as I patted Mudge on the head and tried to disentangle myself while getting the minimum of paint on me.
‘Yeah. I didn’t enjoy it. The world is still full of arseholes and now they’re queuing up to meet me.’
‘You look like you shouldn’t be out on your own,’ he said.
‘There’s an argument for that.’
I glanced over at Sharcroft. As ever, his corpse-like pallor betrayed nothing. I looked back to Morag, who was gazing at me coolly. She hadn’t rushed over to hug me, but neither had she started shouting at me, which I considered a small victory.
‘Is there someplace we can talk?’ I asked.
Pagan nodded and we followed him. Mudge leaped up onto a desk and started dancing.
‘I should be kept apprised-’ Sharcroft started.
‘Fuck off unless you want to get shot,’ I told him. I wasn’t just being obnoxious; I was eager to make sure I remembered just who the enemy was.
Pagan led us into a smaller chamber. It was pretty much empty except for a plain desk, two uncomfortable-looking skeletal chairs, a high-resolution monitor, a holographic projector and some thinscreens. It had a similar metal mesh around it to the main room outside but something about it looked makeshift, scrounged and scavenged.
‘You do this?’ I asked. Pagan and Morag both nodded. ‘Look, I haven’t-’
Morag turned round and glared at me and held a finger over her lips. I felt very green just then. Pagan and Morag swept the place for bugs and found a couple.
‘Little pricks.’ Pagan cursed into the bug before turning to me. ‘In the minute or two we came out to speak to you.’
They both then checked us and took a couple more off me that must have been slipped in when I was being searched. I felt more embarrassed.
‘But I thought this was a what-do-you-call-it cage?’ I said.
‘It is. These are recorders.’
He stamped on them. Morag set up a white-noise projector.
‘Fuuuck!’ Mudge screamed and turned to glare at her. ‘What a fucking comedown. What did you do that for?’
She gently slapped him on the side of the face. ‘Focus, Mudge.’
Then Morag took my head in her hands and kissed me. It’s difficult to describe how good it felt. Afterwards she looked up at me. I could see myself reflected in her replacement eyes. I was a mess but I’d looked a lot worse. Then she hit me squarely on the nose. She was a lot faster and stronger than she had been. It actually hurt. A lot. I reeled back, more from surprise than anything else, and grabbed my nose. She was staring at me, arms crossed.
‘What?!’ I managed.
‘Since talking to you does no good, I thought I’d demonstrate how pleased I am to see you and how pissed off I still am with you.’
Pagan was grinning. Mudge was looking pained. ‘Always the negativity with you two,’ he said despairingly, shaking his head.
‘That may be partially my fault,’ Pagan said.
‘Well I may fucking punch you back.’ I’d been having a much better day until about thirty seconds ago.
‘I merely expressed the opinion to Morag that when you returned we might not have time for her and your normal decision-making process.’
‘Oh brilliant. So now we’ve moved up to violence?’ I asked Morag.
‘Only when talking doesn’t work,’ she said, grinning at me. How very Dundonian, I thought. I blamed Rannu completely for the speed and the strength of the punch. ‘Besides, you’ve been a dick and you’re not taking over.’
‘I’m not here to take over, and where’s Rannu? I want to discuss his hand-to-hand training.’