Then God started screaming.
9
Trace’s expression changed from shock to fury. He looked up. It was clear to him that whatever was happening was our fault. Morag fainted and hit the plush carpet as I started to move towards Trace. With the inhibitor jack in one of my plugs I felt like I was wading through mud to get to him. Inhibited though I was, the barrels on the lasers rotating up to speed still looked like slow motion to me. This just meant that I’d get to see my death more clearly.
My flash compensators saved me from going blind from the red light as it stabbed out. Then the room was full of red steam and we were covered from head to foot in very hot blood. The four security guards looked like they’d been cut in two and had then exploded. Their superheated flesh was still bubbling and steaming. The carpet was on fire. The multiple barrels of the rotary laser were still spinning but no longer firing. They stopped. The sprinklers came on.
Trace was on the other side of his desk looking devastated. I was a little surprised myself. I reached down to pick up one of the M-19s but it came apart in my hand. It had been cut in two.
Trace was drawing a pistol from inside his suit jacket. It looked very shiny and expensive. Mudge had one of the guards’ sidearms a long time before Trace completed the draw.
‘Mudge, no!’ Cat shouted pointlessly. Mudge fired a burst at point-blank range into Trace’s face, which caved in on itself. Mudge was grinning but he looked angry as well.
God was still screaming. It sounded like a thousand voices crying out in agony. The noise was messing with my normally calm demeanour.
‘What the fuck?!’ I demanded of Mudge. He looked like a full-on psycho, covered in blood and laughing in the flickering light.
‘Fuck him. He was an arsehole,’ Mudge said. I only heard him because my dampeners cut through the unnerving sound of God’s screams. Cat and Pagan were right — we were a mess and Mudge was out of control.
I was struggling to sort out what was happening. I was sure I could hear gunfire. Maybe human screams mingling with God’s own.
Cat was checking the guards’ weapons. Another M-19 had been bisected but two of them were fine.
The locks on my shoulder and knuckles sprang off. The inhibitor jack went offline and the world sped up. I picked the inhibitor jack out of my neck plug.
Morag came to and sat up. She was looking around appalled at the carnage.
‘Did you do this?’ I asked her. She looked like she was going to ask for forgiveness even though she’d saved us. Instead she just nodded. She looked sick at what she’d done. ‘Morag!’ I demanded. Her head whipped round to look at me. Then she remembered she hated me. Her remorse gone, the blood and the light made her look somehow evil.
‘It was a secure network but he was communicating with it wirelessly,’ she said. ‘As soon as I knew that, I knew I could hack it.’
Except that you weren’t supposed to be able to hack heavy-duty corporate secure networks and take over their security systems that quickly. Even I knew that.
Cat handed me an M-19 and I passed it to Mudge. I took two of the guards’ sidearms. I was the only ambidextrous shooter and I had a feeling we were going to need to maximise our firepower. Both pistols were shitty little ten mils. Morag had another of the ten mils and we took all the ammo and grenades for the M-19s’ grenade launchers we could carry. Mudge was disgusted to find that all the grenades were stun baton rounds. It made sense. Asteroid habitats were made to be rugged but nobody wanted high-velocity rounds puncturing a window. The bullets in the M-19s were probably low-impact frangible rounds that would shatter rather than penetrate. Frangible rounds were great for use on uppity Belt zombies; not so much fun against people wearing armour.
Morag grabbed a portable computer on the desk and started tapping rapidly on the screen.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Looking at the net,’ she snapped irritably. Because we had time for attitude.
‘Why?’ I demanded. I wanted to tell her that we didn’t have the time.
‘What do you think would make God scream?’ she asked and put the computer down on the desk so we could all see it through the humid blood mist. The screen was showing a net feed. Some comedian had made the asteroid station look like a dark, monstrous subterranean kingdom in the net. The whole thing was lit with a bright white light. I was pretty sure that was how the visual interface was translating God. Tendrils writhed through the station’s virtual reflection, digging deep into its walls, violating the net construct utterly. The tendrils had an organic black look to them. They reminded me of the proto-Them construct Ambassador had shown me in my dreams that had formed in response to the Cabal’s initial attack. Except that these tendrils were burning with black flame. This was something malevolent far beyond a simple attack program.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ Cat asked.
‘I don’t know and I’m not going in to find out,’ Morag told her.
‘What is it?’ I asked. I knew I just didn’t want to face up to what it meant. That this could be over before it started. Morag turned to look at me as if I was stupid. There was only one thing it could be.
‘It’s Demiurge,’ she said.
Whoever had done this had done it well. Power was down. Auxiliary power was down. The station was running on some tertiary, or worse, system. It was getting cold. This was making us steam because we were covered in blood. The lights were still flickering like strobes to the point where it was difficult for our optics to cope.
We didn’t have a plan; we were just trying to get out of there. We were moving down through the corporate administration levels. Whatever was happening hadn’t reached there. There were frightened people hiding in the offices but terse interrogations provided little information as to what was happening.
The sound of gunfire had become less constant but we could still make out distant screaming. It sounded like it was coming from the dorm/recreation areas, which of course we would have to go through to get back to the ship. Assuming that was still a good idea. I still thought it was because we had a better class of gun on board.
We didn’t know where Pagan was and we couldn’t risk any form of comms to find him. All we knew was that he had gone to negotiate something with the Yakuza. All the need-to-know bullshit was beginning to get in the way of this fucked-up op.
Cat was in the lead. She was moving quickly, legs bent to provide a steady platform for her M-19, checking up, down, left, right. Going wide around corners so nobody could grab the weapon. I was behind her, a pistol in each hand. I had my shoulder laser scanning behind me. Then Morag, and finally Mudge watching our backs. At least he wasn’t acting like a fuck-up at the moment. He was doing his job properly.
‘What are we doing?’ Cat asked as we entered a laser-cut rock stairway. She spoke quietly as we had no comms.
‘Getting Pagan and leaving,’ I told her.
‘What about Merle?’
‘He’s a bit of a fucking luxury at the moment.’
‘What if Demiurge has compromised the ship’s comms?’ Morag asked.
‘Is this a good time for a conversation?’ I replied as we rounded a corner on the stairs and almost shot a couple of terrified Belt zombies. Cat took up a covering position on the reinforced door that led into the dorm/rec area.
‘What’s going on?’ I demanded. They jumped at my voice and then spoke in a language I didn’t understand. It sounded faintly eastern European. They pointed towards the door.
‘Are we doing this?’ Cat asked through gritted teeth.
‘We could go and hide,’ I suggested hopefully.