The other guy made me think of all the fun we’d had in Freetown Camp 12 with the Russians. While nowhere near as heavily modified as the Vucari, someone had given a canine look to his face. He had a protruding power-assisted jaw of surgical-steel teeth and a dog-like nose. His fingers ended in distinctly claw-like steel nails. He looked more dog than wolf but not like one of the friendly breeds. Tattoos ran up his cheek through long sideburns and bridged his forehead.
‘No,’ Mudge said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t like dog things.’
He may have been verbalising how we all felt after our run-in with the Vucari. It still wasn’t very diplomatic. The dog guy punched Mudge very hard. Mudge hit the ground.
‘That’s my other dog impression!’ the guy shouted at Mudge, who was trying to get to his feet. Cat grabbed the guy and did something complicated with his arms and neck, immobilising him. There was a lot of shifting about in the assembled circle of guns. Serious violence was imminent.
The other woman, little more than a girl, was the slenderest person there. I didn’t understand why the gravity hadn’t snapped her like a twig. She was pale, paler than the rest, and I was pretty sure she wasn’t a Maori despite the tattooed lips and chin. She had long, straight dark hair and couldn’t have been much older than Morag. Also, she wasn’t right. There was something not there about her, as if she was getting a different signal to the rest of us.
The hard-faced woman and the big hacker just stopped and gave us the eye. The pale girl walked straight up and started to inspect us.
‘Let him go,’ the hard-faced woman said to Cat.
Cat ignored her. Mudge was spitting out blood. Dog guy was struggling to get free; Cat was having none of it.
I turned to look at him. ‘Touch him again and I’ll hurt you, okay?’
The guy was furious at his helplessness. He just spat at me. I nodded to Cat, who cut him loose. That was good. We were acting the part of a together, properly functioning unit, even if we were really a mess. Dog guy turned to glare at Cat but said nothing.
‘That’s our Cat,’ I said, trying to break the tension. It fell flat.
The odd girl was next to me now, examining me. I turned to look at her.
‘You SF?’ the hard-faced woman asked. We didn’t answer.
‘They’re SF,’ the big guy said.
‘Well thank fuck. We’re saved,’ dog guy growled.
‘They transmitting?’ the hard-faced woman asked.
‘Not that I can tell. They seem to be running comms dark,’ the big guy answered.
‘Check their vehicles anyway.’
The hacker moved towards the FAVs.
I moved to intercept. ‘Hold on,’ I said, holding up my hand.
‘You’re transmitting, we’re fucked. We’ll have to run again and we always lose people when we run,’ the woman said.
‘We’re running comms dark,’ Pagan said. ‘We’re hiding from the same thing you are.’
The big guy stopped but glanced back at the woman. The pale girl was examining Morag now. Morag was smiling uncomfortably at her.
Mudge climbed to his feet, spitting blood. ‘Ow!’ he announced and lit up a spliff. There seemed to be no visible enmity towards the dog guy. Maybe after being blown up he didn’t care.
‘Couple of things you need to get used to. We are going to check your vehicles and we will be taking your food. You’ll get your fair share if we decide not to kill you and let you stay,’ the woman told me. ‘Big Henry, what’s the score?’
‘They were fighting the good fight when I found them,’ came the amplified reply from the mech.
‘You fighting the Freedom Squadrons?’ the big hacker asked.
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Freedom Squadrons? We call them the Black Squadrons,’ I said.
‘Freedom Squadrons is what they call themselves. We mostly call them wankers,’ dog guy growled.
‘She’s really fucking with my calm!’ Mudge said, pointing at the pale girl, whose face was inches away from his as she studied him. Maybe he’d had enough of being kicked around after all.
‘Leave her be,’ the big hacker said. There was a dangerous edge to his voice that didn’t strike me as an affectation. I was pretty sure this guy knew how to look after himself.
‘You guys British?’ the woman asked. I nodded. ‘You in-country when this happened?’ I shook my head. ‘You point on an invasion?’ I shook my head. ‘Didn’t think so. Your food?’
‘Cat, Merle, give them half our ration packs.’
Merle’s head whipped round to look at me. He wanted to say something but was more disciplined. Mudge wasn’t.
‘Half our…’ Somehow he had the presence of mind to shut up when I glared at him. May as well try and keep up the pretence of professionalism.
‘Anyone tries to take more, shoot them,’ I continued.
The hard-faced woman gave this some thought.
‘Just so you know, when we need the other half we’ll take it, and if you don’t like it then we’ve got a long and proud history of cannibalism.’
There was laughter. From us as well. They just didn’t seem that scary after the Vucari.
‘Well, let’s hope we’re friends by then,’ I said. ‘You’re not checking the vehicles. We’re not transmitting. You can work that out yourselves. You’ll just have to trust us. We’ll pay for that trust in food.’
‘We can take-’ dog guy started, but the woman held up her hand and he was quiet.
‘Look, mate, I’m sorry about what he said, but we’ve had a bad time with some people that looked like you recently. We may be the only friends you’ve got down here,’ I said. It was a guess, but they looked in a bad way.
‘And we’re the only friends you’ve got, right?’ the big hacker asked. He had a point.
‘Assuming we don’t eat you,’ the woman said.
The place was called Utu Pa. A pa was some sort of Maori fortification and utu meant something between revenge and reciprocity. I’d done the introductions. They just gave us their call signs. I suspect the call signs had been their nicknames when they’d run as a gang together and were probably more meaningful to them than their real names. The hard-faced woman was Mother. She had been the senior NCO and now appeared to command the entire pa. The big hacker was called Tailgunner and with Mother drove the Bismarck-class mech. Dog guy was called Dog Face. That would be easy to remember. Some piece of shit had had him modified when he was still a kid to act as a human ratter. Apparently they had rats here on Lalande, which sort of impressed me. The pale girl went by the name of Strange. Again I didn’t think I was going to have a problem remembering that.
Big Henry, our saviour, had of course turned out to be very short. It was a typical squaddie naming convention. Not much bigger than a Twist, he moved with a particular waddling gate but was very powerfully built. A battered and ancient-looking bowler hat perched precariously on his mass of thick braided hair, which was pulled into a ponytail. His beard was braided as well and he had tattoos on what little hair-free skin we could see. He’d seemed the least hostile of the lot, but then he’d seen us fighting the bad guys.
After our initial chat Mudge had pulled me aside.
‘Half our fucking food!’ he demanded.
‘There’s more back at the cache, and Merle knows where there are more caches.’
‘Which could be compromised.’ Cat and Merle were acting as armed supervision as Mother’s people removed half our ration packs from the FAVs.