[ No chance we’ll be spotted?]
[ Nope. I’ve put datablocks up to mask anything unusual. And …] Fist was silent for a moment. In the distance, a virtual dog howled at an imagined moon. [Got it. Lots of choice in the block’s visual templates. When I’ve got a moment, I can change how the panthers look. No more big cats to scare you!]
[ Thank you,] said Jack. [And there’s one more thing we need to do before Ato gets back. We have to talk to Harry.]
[ That psychopath? You’re crazy.]
[ We need to understand more about him. It could help us break Yamata.]
[ But they’re the same as each other. What if he’s on her side?]
[ You saw how they went at each other. There’s not much chance of that.]
[ Hmmph.]
[Can you summon him?]
[Suppose so.]
[ Then do it.]
Fist grumbled as he complied.
‘You call – and here I am!’ smiled Harry, strolling casually out of the darkness. He was wearing a suit and a long, dark overcoat. Fist snapped into full defensive mode. The panthers reappeared, ringing Harry. A harsh, low growl rolled across the clearing. ‘Lovely pets,’ he said, stretching a hand out to one of them. It snapped at him. Harry took a step back, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it tightly round a bloody finger. ‘Sharp teeth, eh?’
[ He’s contained,] Fist told Jack. [ It’s safe to talk.]
‘Hello Jack,’ said Harry. ‘Good to see you.’
[Scanning him too?]
[ Yes, Jack. Now I know what I’m looking for – human mind, Totality architecture, identical to Yamata.]
‘Of course I’m happy to be scanned, Jack. After all, we’re old friends, aren’t we? Nothing to hide.’
‘You’ve hidden quite a lot, Harry. It’s about time you were straight with us.’
‘I’ve always been as straight with you as you have with me.’ That seemed barbed, but Harry’s expression was entirely innocent. Jack let it pass. ‘Besides,’ continued Harry, ‘we both want the same thing – Kingdom’s head on a plate, and Yamata’s with it.’
‘Bullshit, Harry. We know what you are now. It’s very different from what you pretend to be.’
Harry was suddenly holding a cigar and a box of matches. Each panther took a pace towards him. ‘No need to worry,’ he said reassuringly. ‘This really is just a smoke. Or rather, the memory of one.’ A little flame from a match suckled at the cigar’s tip, chasing shadows from his face.
‘But you’re not the memory of Harry, are you?’ replied Jack. ‘You were never a fetch. You’re something very different.’
[ I can take him, Jack. Let me try!]
[ Hush, Fist. Not now. Not if we don’t have to.]
‘That’s right, I’m not a memory. I am Harry. Always have been, always will be. I really shouldn’t be here, you know. But I’m a very lucky man.’
‘What happened to you?’ said Jack.
‘Can you get rid of this lot?’ Harry indicated the panthers. ‘So much easier to talk when you’re not surrounded.’
‘The muscle stays,’ Fist spat.
Harry took a long, slow draw on his cigar. The end of it flared orange-pink. The rich smell of smoke filled the glade.
[ Very impressive simulation,] commented Fist. [Serious processor power behind it.]
[ We’re definitely safe?]
[Completely.]
‘All right if I sit?’ wondered Harry. Jack looked to Fist, who nodded. ‘Taking orders from a puppet?’ he asked, with a look Jack chose to ignore. A chair appeared and he sat down, carefully pulling his overcoat out from beneath him.
[ Now he’s just showing off,] said Fist.
‘So, what do you want to know?’ asked Harry.
‘The truth,’ Jack replied.
Harry sighed. ‘All right, Jack. I’m not a fetch. Yamata came for me when I reopened the Penderville case. By then she wasn’t human any more. She burned my mind into a Totality hive, then tossed my body away and let everyone think I’d been shot by some Docklands lowlife.’
‘Why did she bother doing that?’
‘I was straight with you about the Penderville case. She wanted to stop me finding out why she’d killed him. And that gave her an opportunity to seize all the knowledge I had.’ Harry tapped his forehead. ‘In here. And directly integrate it with her own systems. Of course, to do that she had to turn me into something just like her.’
‘That would take a lot of hardware. Where did she hide it all?’
‘I was sitting around somewhere in Homelands. Yamata dug through my mind, pulled out everything I knew about InSec. That meant she was ahead of them every step of the way. They couldn’t touch her. And she used everything I knew on Docklands crime syndicates, too. All my old contacts work for her now.’
‘What was she doing?’
‘She was behind the terrorist attacks on Station. I should have realised she’d be working for Kingdom. He could blame them on the Totality, and use them to take down Grey and anyone else who was anti-war. Helped him keep the Soft War going too. Classic gambler, keeps on losing, always takes another punt and hopes he’ll win it all back.’
‘For fuck’s sake, Harry. Why didn’t you tell me this before?’
‘My investigation, Jack, like I always told you. You knew what you needed to know to get the job done. And I’ve never trusted that puppet of yours.’
‘YOU? Worried about trusting ME? Fucking hell, Devlin,’ snarled Fist.
‘So they were false flag attacks,’ Jack said. ‘But you helped them happen. Why didn’t you fight back? Refuse to work with Yamata?’
‘She never woke me up enough. It was like living in a dream. She’d use a bit of me here, a bit of me there. But I began to realise that the dream was real. After the Panther Czar fiasco you were sent out-system, but I was only moved across departments. I always worried that someone would make my lack of involvement more permanent. So, I put some countermeasures in place in case someone killed me or tried to screw with me once I was dead. They woke up – and they started to wake me up, too.’
‘What then?’
‘Well, most of me was usually shut away from her. I didn’t know exactly how powerful she was. I certainly wasn’t in a position to take her on directly.’
‘You did a pretty good job the other day,’ Fist said.
‘I was ready for her. And I’ve been rebuilding myself. It’s been quite a few years since I escaped. Besides, back then, I had other problems. I needed to get the Totality hardware she was storing me on away from her.’
‘You could have just jumped into the Coffin Drives.’
‘No way. Once you’re on them, you’re trapped. Besides, I quite like running on Totality hardware. You should feel it, your mind just sings. So I had to move myself physically. Easily done, she didn’t know how awake I really was. A little bit of looking around, some alterations to a transport docket, smoke and mirrors around the document trail, and Bob’s your uncle! I was out of my little Homelands warehouse and free.’
‘And you’ve done nothing to try and stop her.’
‘Too risky. Haven’t found anyone I could trust. And besides, even if I did manage to go public, who’d believe me? A ghost, accusing the Pantheon of staging a war for their own ends. At best, I’d get found and wiped. At worst, I’d go straight back to being Yamata’s bitch.’
‘So where are you now?’
‘Oh, that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Somewhere safe from her – and from your contacts, too. The Pantheon doesn’t like competition much, you know.’
[Off-Station,] commented Fist. [Lag time says he’s still in Earth orbit, bouncing his signal off comms satellites.]
‘You make getting away sound very easy,’ said Jack.
‘Yamata was overconfident. That made her easy to fool. She’s not any more. That’s why you need my help.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding.’
‘I know how she works. I am what she is. I can help you crack her defences. I threw her out of TrueShield, and I chased her back to the heart of Kingdom. I can get your puppet deep inside her.’