The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [86]
I try to stifle a groan. “Guys, is this really necessary? Does it help me do the job?”
Pinky cocks his head to one side. “Predictive Branch says there’s a ten percent chance of you failing on the job and dying horribly if you don’t take it.” He giggles. “Feeling lucky, punk?”
“Bah. What do I really need to know?”
“Here.” Brains tosses a stainless steel Zippo lighter to me: “It’s an antique, don’t lose it. Predictive Branch said it would come in handy.”
“I don’t smoke. What else?”
“The usual stuff: There’s a USB memory drive preloaded with a forensic intrusion kit hidden in each end of your dickey-bow, a WiFi-finder on your key ring, a roll-up keyboard in your cummerbund, the pen’s got Bluetooth and doubles as a mouse, and there’s a miniaturized Tillinghast resonator in your left heel. You turn it on by twisting the heel through one-eighty degrees; turn it off the same way. Your other heel is just a heel: We were going to hide a Basilisk gun in it but some ass-hat in Export Controls vetoed our requisition because it was going overseas. Oh, and there’s this.” Brains reaches over to a briefcase on the bed and pulls out a businesslike nylon shoulder holster and a black automatic pistol. “Walther P99, 9mm caliber, fifteen-round magazine, silvercap hollow-points engraved with a demicyclic banishment circuit in ninety-nanometer Enochian.”
“Banishment rounds?” I ask hesitantly, then: “Hang on.” I hold up one hand: “I’m not cleared for carrying guns in the field!”
“We figured the exorcism payload means it’s covered by your occult weapons certification. If anyone asks, it’s just a gadget for installing exorcism glyphs at high speed.” Brains sits down on the bed, ejects the magazine, works the action to make sure there’s no round in the chamber, then starts stripping it down. “Word from Angleton is the bad guys are likely to get heavy and he wants you carrying.”
“Oh my.” I blank for a moment. It’s only about an hour since I sliced some poor bastard’s air hose in half, and having to deal with this so soon afterwards is doing my head in. “Did he really say that?”
“Yes. We don’t want to end up losing you by accident because someone starts shooting and you’re unarmed, do we?”
“I guess not.” He passes the shoulder holster to me and I try to figure out how it goes on. “Well, if you’re all done now, maybe you could leave so I can phone home?”
AFTER PINKY AND BRAINS LEAVE, I CALL DOWN TO room service for a light lunch, put the door chain on, then go run a bath. There’s a wet suit hanging over the shower rail and an oxygen tank leaning up against the toilet. While the bath’s filling I try phoning home, but get the answering machine. I try Mo’s mobile, but that’s switched off, too. She must still be in Dunwich under lockdown. Feeling sorry for myself, I go and rinse the salt off my skin: but I can’t hang around in the bath without thinking of Ramona, and that’s not a healthy sign either. I’m confused about her, I feel guilty whenever I think about Mo, and the smell of saltwater brings back that frightening slow-motion underwater tumble, knife in hand. This isn’t me: I’m just not the cold-blooded killer type. When shit needs kicking and throats need slitting we send in Alan’s goon squad. I’m supposed to be the quiet geek who sits at the back of the computer lab, right?
Except I signed my name on the line a few years ago, right below the paragraph that said I accepted the Crown’s commission to go forth and perpetrate mayhem in the defense of the realm, as lawfully directed and commanded by my designated superiors. And while most of the time it’s trivial shit—like breaking into an office and leaving evidence to shitcan some poor bastard who’s stumbled too close to the truth—there’s nothing there that says I’m not required to wrestle killers in wet suits or molest alien monsters. Quite the contrary, in fact. I don’t have a license to kill, but I don’t have orders not to kill in the course of my duties, either. Which realization I find extremely disturbing; it