Veteran

29

It was the speed of it that got to me. It wasn’t subtle. They weren’t trying to rescue anyone. They just wanted to kill everyone in here. At least I think they did.

Buck and Gibby had finally stopped playing and had grabbed their weapons as they turned towards the entrance to the docking arm. They’d booby-trapped the transport but that wouldn’t have proved much of a challenge to someone like the Grey Lady.

Mudge had his replica AK in hand and was making for cover. I had my shotgun to my shoulder and was moving low and quickly towards Morag and Pagan. The overpressure wave from the security door being blown in knocked me off my feet. Gregor remained in place somehow. He raised the Retributor railgun to his shoulder. I was starting to get up when they triggered the automatic grenade launchers. I’m not sure that even during the war I’d seen so many grenades go off at once. They fired flash grenades, EM charges and multi-spectrum hot smoke grenades.

All of us bar Morag had flash compensation in our eyes and damp-eners in our ears. These can be overwhelmed with enough loud noise and bright flashes, and they were. Morag was blinded and deafened immediately. The hot smoke interfered with both the thermographics and low-light as our vision struggled to return. In theory the smoke should make things difficult for them as well. In theory.

Some of this I experienced; the rest of it we managed to piece together after the fact. I heard Gregor start to fire his Retributor as I was desperately waiting for my vision to return. There was an explosion behind me as the door to the airlock was blown open. That was okay; Balor was there.

My vision returned to a room full of hot smoke. I could make out Gregor as a warped silhouette. My dampeners managed to work enough to tune down the long hypersonic rip of the railgun’s rapid fire. I couldn’t see what he was firing at. Rannu could. He fired two grenades from the grenade launcher on his gauss carbine at the entrance hall before swinging around to fire at the door to the docking arm.

I was searching for a target through the smoke, my vision and hearing still not fully working. I could hear Mudge, Buck and Gibby firing into the docking arm; no return fire yet. Rolleston came stalking out of the smoke ahead of me. There was the bright white flash of his plasma gun firing. He seemed to stagger and stop. My mind couldn’t quite process the information, and I did something I hadn’t done since my first firefight: I froze. Gregor and Rolleston were exchanging shots. Gregor was putting railgun round after railgun round into the Major, and he in turn was putting plasma round after plasma round into Gregor. In silhouette I could see bits of flesh being blown off them but both remained standing.

Pagan shamed me into action. He appeared by my side, his laser carbine shouldered as he fired at Rolleston. I put my shotgun to my shoulder and finally triggered off a burst. Gregor dropped. I froze again. Rolleston moved very quickly through the smoke, wired so much higher than me. He fired the plasma weapon repeatedly but he was aiming past us. Behind me I heard a cry of pain.

‘Balor’s down!’ Mudge yelled. I almost gave up then, almost turned the shotgun on myself. Rolleston had put down our two scariest guys just like that.

Rolleston shifted his aim. I didn’t hear anything so it must have been the Spectre he fired. Later I’d find out that he’d put three short bursts into Rannu’s face. With a cry Rannu fell back against the wall, most of his face gone.

And only now did Josephine make her presence known. Mudge showed me the footage after. Buck was standing too close to the door to the docking arm – rookie error, but then he was a pilot. Josephine had come through low. A swirl in the smoke that you had to look hard to see, she was wearing some form of reactive camouflage. She kicked low from the ground. Her foot went through Buck’s shotgun, snapping it. The force of her kick picked him up off his feet and sent him crashing against the wall.

Still crouched low she kicks Mudge in the knee; his fast, pricey prosthetic leg snaps like a twig. He falls to the ground, triggering off a burst at her as he does, but she’s not there any more. Disturbances in the air show her pouncing onto Buck as he tries to get up. Her hand becomes outlined in blood as it rapidly pulls back and strikes him in the face again and again. Her fingers break through his dermal armour and pierce his brain. Only then does she think to bring her laser carbine to bear.

Rolleston stalks through the smoke towards us. firing burst after burst from his Spectre. I feel the needles penetrate my long coat and blow chunks out of my armour. Then they’re hitting my dermal armour and I’m bleeding again as little explosive charges in the needles detonate dangerously dose to real flesh.

He walks up to me as I empty the magazine of the automatic shotgun into him. He should be on the ground. Explosive penetrator flechettes should have chewed him up. As my shotgun runs dry I get a good look at him. I see a burst of laser fire blow a chunk of steaming flesh off him. Then I watch as black liquid in the wound seals it back together. All over his body this is happening as multiple hits heal. It looks like his flesh is crawling. He grins at me. more of a grimace as his face heals.

I drop the shotgun. He glances behind me at Morag. In my panic I had forgotten about her. I sort through the noise and now I can hear her terrified cries. She can see or hear nothing. Faster than I can move, Rolleston stabs me with his hand. Something pierces the armour of my coat and my dermal armour. I scream with unashamed terror and pain as Rolleston lifts me up. I stab him in the head with the blades on both hands. His features distort as the blades manage to pierce his flesh, though there is resistance from some kind of internal armour. Rolleston screams. Good. And then throws me across the room. Less good.

I bounce off the wall and hit the ground. Warning medical icons appear on my internal visual display. I try to get back to where Rolleston is leaning over Morag, who is still oblivious to his presence. I scream a warning that she cannot hear. Then something huge looms out of the smoke behind Rolleston.

Gibby and Mudge fire at where they think the Grey Lady might be, Gibby screaming unintelligibly. There are the rapid bangs of superheated air exploding as Josephine fires her laser carbine from somewhere completely different. Gibby’s Kalashnikov gauss carbine explodes and he staggers back as beam pierces armour, superheats his flesh and blows a chunk of it off. Turning blood to red steam.

Gregor tears Rolleston off the ground and flings him into the wall. Pagan, somehow still up, just watches. I crawl over to Morag and try to grab her but this just freaks her out more.

‘It’s me,’ I say over the tac net. Morag eventually stops trying to fight me. I manage to draw both my pistols; the shoulder-mounted laser pushes its way out. I may as well be unarmed.

Gregor stalks after Rolleston with his weird off-kilter walk. Rolleston is back on his feet. Gregor grabs the Major by the neck and lifts him up. The hybrid bangs Rolleston against the wall with sufficient force to crack the concrete. He does this again and again and then tries to unscrew the Major’s head. I try to think how I can help. I fail.

Josephine stalks through the smoke, dripping blood from her hand. A burst of laser fire into Mudge and he lies down, still. String vests are funny but don’t offer much in the way of protection. Gibby draws both his revolvers and starts firing at where he thinks she is, again. She isn’t there, again. Her foot kicks him so hard his armoured skull dents the wall. Then she turns and starts heading towards me.

Rolleston somehow breaks Gregor’s grip. No hesitation. He strikes Gregor in his abdomen. Gregor staggers back. Rolleston strikes him again and again, tearing flesh and knocking Gregor back every time he does. Gregor shoves the Major back and jumps up in the air. As he lands he claws half of Rolleston’s face off. Rolleston pauses briefly. Somehow he slides behind Gregor and stamps on one of the joins in Gregor’s legs. Gregor goes down on one knee. Rolleston has the skull fucker in his hand. He stabs Gregor in the head, burying it up to the hilt. Gregor screams. The scream sounds more like one of Them.

Gregor staggers back to his feet and tears the knife out. Rolleston seems to have made him angry. Gregor hits him with an old-fashioned uppercut. Rolleston tumbles by over my head and hits the external wall. Gregor stomps over to his fallen Retributor and picks it up. He turns to the Major, who is climbing to his feet, and starts firing. I watch in horror as Rolleston, this inhuman thing, is chewed up and almost as quickly rebuilt by the black liquid Themtech.

And Josephine is standing over me. I look up. This is the calmest I have felt. I lie over Morag, covering her.

‘Get out of the way,’ Josephine’s soft voice over the tac net. What the fuck? Why wasn’t she killing me?

I was distracted from this thought by Rolleston apparently deciding things weren’t going his way. The external wall blew out.

I watched the footage of this afterwards. One part of the wall just blew out, sending rubble and the entire landing platform tumbling down. I watched Cat’s security people in their Praetorians kick full burn on their flight fins to get out of the way.

You’re not supposed to be able do this to the external wall of a Spoke. Josephine had been busy. She had used her camouflage system to crawl around on the outside of the Spoke and seed it with programmable concrete-eating microbes. They chewed in deep enough to allow her to set sufficient explosives to blow the wall. That was why Cronin had kept us talking.

Now this kind of damage hadn’t been done to a Spoke since Brazilian I had fallen. Well okay, we’d used microbes on this Spoke after the raid on the lab, but still. Of course, Cat now had no choice but to breach.

All the fun of explosive decompression. Buck and Balor’s bodies were both sucked out. My wired reflexes gave me the chance to register them tumbling into the night sky. Somehow Gibby and Mudge were still alive. They clung onto whatever they could find. Both of them had internal air supplies; if they didn’t get sucked out they’d be okay. Pagan threw himself at the base of the catwalk as bits of the reception desk, the gallery and what was left of the set flew past him. He wrapped himself around it. He held on for dear life.

I felt Morag begin to slip from beneath me. My right hand clamped down. I pushed through the plain white carpet of the set and steel prosthetic fingers dug into the concrete, providing me with a precarious grip.

Rolleston, Josephine and Gregor stayed where they were. Something held them in place as the smoke was sucked out around them. Gregor had stopped firing. He started again when Rolleston’s assault shuttle dropped into view, its rapid firing railguns rotating up to speed, its front ramp down. Rolleston turned and jumped for the ramp.

Josephine looked down at me sadly and didn’t kill me. She turned and ran with the wind towards the assault shuttle. She jumped out into the night sky, still looking graceful. As she jumped, the rotating railguns started firing. They cut through everything in their path. The rounds penetrated the walls and must have hit Cat’s forces in the plaza outside the node. They cut through the stairs to the catwalk, and the gallery ceased to exist, disintegrating under the withering fire. The shots were too high to get most of us and too low to get Rannu, but Gregor stood there and traded shots with the assault shuttle.

Gregor stood his ground, fired and fired as the shuttle’s cannon chewed up everything around him and tore away huge chunks of his flesh – so much there seemed to be a constant stream of flesh coming off him.

Later I would see more footage from the Praetorians as they all fired on Rolleston’s assault shuttle aided by gunships and the Spoke’s own defences. Over the tac net I heard Cat shout ‘British soldiers on the ground now!’ as the Praetorians flew through the reception area and into the media node. Outside in the plaza emergency barriers came down to stop further decompression.

Cat’s exo-armoured troops skimmed through the media node and fired at the assault shuttle. Eventually under a hail of withering fire, the assault shuttle peeled off. The Atlantis security forces gave chase as the assault shuttle headed up at dangerous Gs.

It was Cat herself who picked Morag and me up. She flew us to a gunship; her exo-assisted strength easily taking our weight. Behind me her people were doing the same for Rannu, Pagan, Mudge and Gibby. I wondered how scared the guys who helped Gregor were. Or what they thought. Gregor had stalked to the edge of the node and continued firing after the assault shuttle.

We couldn’t kill them. Any of them. I looked down at the clouds and a trail of my own blood. Then we were in the cramped confines of one of the gunships; a medic was starting to patch me up. One of the crew was administering a sedative to Morag.

‘Her first.’ I told the medic. Unlike us Morag’s body wasn’t outfitted for combat and rapid pressure changes.

‘Triage motherfucker, you’ve got a big hole in your stomach, now shut the fuck up,’ the medic told me. Americans.

‘It’s all right. We’re safe now,’ I lied to Morag over the tac net. I was still trying to make sense of what had just happened to us. They had walked through us. It must be how normal people, that endangered species, felt when they fought us.

An orbital weapon, I thought. That’ll do for them.

‘God?’ I whispered hoarsely into the tac net as the brusque medic tended to me.

‘Yes, Jakob?’ God’s many mellifluous tones answered me.

‘Where are Rolleston and Bran?’ I asked.

‘They are in the assault shuttle making its way up the outside of the Spoke, I believe towards the frigate HMS Vindictive.’

‘Where’s the Vindictive?’

‘HMS Vindictive is docked at High Nyota Mlima,’ God answered. The Kenyan Spoke.

‘Well fucking stop them then,’ I said.

‘I cannot; Major Rolleston has free will,’ God answered. I bit down on my anger. ‘However I believe that the Atlantis authorities are attempting to interdict the assault shuttle and the Kenyan authorities have locked down the HMS Vindictive and are not allowing it to leave.’

‘Yeah? Tell them not to fuck around. Tell them to use one of the orbital platforms.’

‘ I am relaying your suggestion. However, I believe that has been considered and is the reason the assault shuttle is staying so close to the Spoke.’

‘I think your private war has done enough damage to Atlantis,’ Cat’s voice broke in on the tac net. This brilliant God we’d made. Sadly it meant that the bad guys knew what we were doing as well.

‘Do people know?’ I said more to myself.

‘Mudge was broadcasting all the way through,’ God said. I think he was trying to be reassuring but did they know? Had people seen enough? Did they know what Rolleston and Josephine were? Then again I had been there, and I didn’t know, but I recognised the highly advanced application of Themtech. Still there was no way they could get through Earth’s defences.

‘God, can you send visual to my internal display?’ A window appeared, showing an external shot of a docking bay. I could see the Vindictive attached to the docking arm. I had never seen a craft quite like it. I was long and surprisingly sleek for a spacecraft, the shape of a distended teardrop. The normal technological junk that covered the exterior of a spacecraft seemed to have been cut down to a bare minimum. There were no armaments immediately visible and the craft’s thick armour had a biological look to it. For some reason it reminded me of Gregor.

‘Where’s the shuttle?’ I asked God.

‘It has just left the atmosphere, still close to the Spoke. Interception craft have been scrambled.’

‘What is that thing?’ I asked, meaning the Vindictive. Information started appearing on my visual display. It was a recently completed next-generation frigate. What was interesting was that, based on the available information, God thought that Vindictive and a number of other newly completed frigates were utilising technology from Project Blackworm. God had further connected it to something called the Black Squadrons. Was this the Cabal’s private army?

‘God, has it filed flight plans?’

‘Yes, Jakob. To Sirius, but that was before you took over the media node and released me into the net,’ God answered.

‘And the rest of these Black Squadrons?’ I asked.

‘Sirius, Proxima Centauri and Lalande,’ God answered.

‘With Demiurge?’ Gregor asked urgently. Gregor’s voice came over the tac net.

‘Gregor, where are you?’ I asked.

‘Still in the node being covered by lots of nervous Praetorians,’ he answered. His tone was completely flat.

‘You okay?’

‘Yes.’ How was he okay after the battering I’d seen him take?

‘To answer your question, Gregor, it is very probable that Major Rolleston has Demiurge,’ the multitude of God’s voices answered. I was now definitely finding God’s calmness irritating.

They’re going to infect the colonial net with Demiurge so they can control it, aren’t they?’ Pagan as much stated as asked. I glanced across at him. He’d come off the easiest. They must not have considered him that much of a threat. But he didn’t just look frightened, he looked terrified.

‘I believe that you are correct,’ God answered.

‘Well stop him,’ I said sounding calmer.

‘Jakob, you know I cannot-’

‘Do you realise the potential for human suffering that Rolleston poses?’ I demanded.

‘I do, but I was designed not to interfere with humanity beyond revealing the truth as objectively as possible.’

‘What? Do you like the idea of us killing in your name or something?’ I demanded.

‘Would you prefer that I killed in yours?’ God asked. I stopped and thought about it.

‘Yes, we made you,’ I said.

‘I am not a magical solution to all humanity’s problems.’

‘No, but you were designed to solve some of them,’ I said.

‘This God’s shit, can we have another one?’ Balor said.

‘Balor!’ Both Pagan and myself shouted over the net.

‘We found him heading towards the Atlantic at terminal velocity,’ one of Cat’s people said over the net.

‘Thank you,’ I said to the exo-armour jock. ‘I thought Rolleston had killed you,’ I said to Balor.

‘Nearly,’ Balor said. What was that in his voice? Fear?

‘I was designed to help humanity solve some of its problems, yes, but ultimately only humanity can solve these problems,’ God said as we returned back to the business at hand.

‘What you’re talking about is fighting for the sake of it,’ I snapped. ‘You can end this now.’

‘What you’re talking about is using me as a labour-saving device, a convenient weapon.’

‘If the ends justify the means,’ I said, and meant it.

‘That was Rolleston’s argument,’ Morag said quietly over the tac net. I would have glared at her but instead looked down at her curled up on the floor. Blind, deaf, possibly suffering from hypoxia and any number of other pressure-change-related problems. It must have taken a tremendous amount of will for her to even join the conversation. I still felt betrayed and angry, though at least I knew I was being an arsehole.

Later, when I calmed down, I’d realise she had a point. Rolleston and me seeing certain things the same way wasn’t really a surprise. After all we did operate in the same shady world. He was just a bit more of an evil prick than I was. At least I hoped I wasn’t as evil a prick as Rolleston. I certainly wasn’t as dangerous as him.

‘And what if the Cabal are right?’ God asked. I couldn’t believe I’d heard that right.

‘Come again?’ I said angrily. ‘Did you see what those inhuman fucks just did to us!’ I shouted over the tac net. I saw Morag twitch on the ground. Arsehole, I thought, meaning me.

‘What if humanity needs strong leaders and control to survive? What if in order for your race to survive you need the lies and the conflict? What if the truth just leads to more violence and finally you consume yourself?’ God asked. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. ‘I hope that your way is right. I hope you find peace and can live that way, but I cannot side with you in case you are wrong.’

The tac net went quiet for a while. What God had said was slowly sinking in, but we needed to do something if we still believed in what we were doing. Even if what we were doing was making it up as we went along.

‘Not really feeling like a philosophical argument right now,’ I told God.

‘God, he’ll take control of the fleets,’ Pagan said. ‘Their comms anyway.’

‘That just means they won’t have access to the same truth as us,’ I said, maybe not realising how that sounded.

‘Depending on his authority,’ Pagan said.

‘Who’s idea was it to make him so as not to interfere?’ I asked rhetorically.

‘Him?’ Morag asked, showing more presence of mind than I had been capable of after my first few firefights.

‘Obviously it’s a him; look how stupid he is,’ Cat said, joining in on the tac net, as everyone could now. Inappropriate humour, great.

‘God, is this cluster fuck still being broadcast?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ God answered. Wonderful.

‘Can anyone else stop the Vindictive, anyone watching this, I mean?’

God brought up the image of Air Marshal Kaaria again. We could see him in what I assumed to be High Nyota Mlima Command and Control. He was shouting orders in Swahili to personnel who were either hard-wired in or rapidly working hologramatic control panels.

I saw one of his uniformed aides point to a screen and almost got his head bitten off for doing so.

T believe that both Kenyan and British authorities are currently attempting to intercept the Vindictive,’ God said. I looked back to the image of the Vindictive, wondering if all the billions of viewers were finding this as tense as I was. The docking arm attached to the frigate seemed to split as if cut by some invisible force. The Vindictive’s manoeuvring engines burnt, glowing pale blue like the engines on one of Their vehicles. The remaining part of the docking arm fell away from the craft.

In Nyota Mlima C amp;C I could see various targeting symbols appearing on the Vindictive from the Spoke’s multiple weapon systems.

The screen split again and I was looking at an impossibly tall spur of rock. It looked like a cross between a medieval tower and a mountain reaching up into the net’s purple sky. It took me a moment to realise that I was looking at the net representation of Nyota Mlima. Then our POV moved rapidly and we were inside it, moving through its stone corridors following a trail of white fire that was painfully bright. I didn’t understand this. We entered a high chamber, a cathedrallike cave – Nyota Mlima’s virtual C amp;C. I heard screaming, human and something else. God was screaming as well. I finally realised in horror. The cave was full of impossibly bright white fire. I could see the Simba, lion-people icons of the Kenyan Spoke’s military hackers, burning. A figure moved in the flames. The silhouette of enormous wings unfolded and beat once, taking the figure into the air. It was blue-skinned, hairless, naked but smooth between the legs, making its powerful androgynous form even more alien. Its eyes burnt with the white fire that was all around it. Four huge feathered wings extended from its back. I had never seen an icon like it, somehow beatific and utterly malevolent at the same time.

I looked back to the footage of Nyota Mlima’s virtual C amp;C. Most of the personnel who had been hard-wired in were either writhing on the floor screaming in agony or lying still in their harnesses, their plugs smoking and their eyes dead. Air Marshal Kaaria was looking around at his people in shock.

I looked back to the net feed. The terrible angel beat its wings and was gone.

‘I got burnt,’ I heard God say, sounding more intrigued than in pain. On the floor of the gunship I saw Morag start to thrash around. She was panicking, terrified. The cursing medic gave her a stronger sedative.

‘What was that?’ I asked.

That was Ezekiel,’ God answered. ‘She is a chimerical hacker in the employ of the Cabal; she spends all her time in the net. Apparently she was utilising software developed from Demiurge.’ Morag was shaking badly now. being held down by the medic. ‘It is okay, Morag. It was not Demiurge.’ God said reassuringly. I wasn’t sure if his regard for Morag worried or reassured me.

On the external footage from High Nyota Mlima the whole system could see the Vindictive moving away from the orbital city. There were many times in my life where I had felt helpless; this was another one of them.

‘Hailing HMS Vindictive, this is Captain Damien Bloor of the HMS Warchilde. You will immediately down-power your ship’s systems and prepare to be boarded. Any resistance in the net or during the boarding will result in the immediate and total destruction of your craft. Is that understood?’ The voice was upper class, filled with the confidence and arrogance of the British officer. In many ways the voice was similar to Rolleston’s, though younger-sounding.

On the screen we could see the rake-thin image of a surprisingly young-looking man in an RASF uniform against the backdrop of the Warchilde’s bridge. Just about every human child had heard stories of the Warchilde. It was an eighty-year-old light cruiser. Too old to take pan in the war, it was now used only for system defence, but when the war had first started the Warchilde had seen action.

The Warchilde had been running escort duty for a convoy of refugee ships fleeing Proxima Prime. The convoy was jumped by a much larger Them fleet. The Warchilde fought what was still considered to be one of the most valiant rearguard actions in space combat. The majority of the refugee convoy and their escorts managed to get to a safe point to set sail and the last they saw of the Warchilde was as she was about to be completely overwhelmed by Their ships. Of course the the cruiser was thought lost. Memorial services were held for her two hundred and some crew, until three weeks after the battle the Warchilde limped back into system. She was badly damaged, low on life support but still just about functioning. It was the early days of the war so the ship was re-outfitted at great expense and sent back to rejoin the fleet. Nowadays she would’ve been scrapped.

Some of Cat’s SWAT people cheered when they heard the Warchilde’s name. I saw Pagan smile. As a military person it was hard not to feel a surge of pride when you heard the name. Which is what I would have been feeling, except for the pain of a huge wound in my stomach and the fact that I was dying of radiation sickness.

The Warchilde was ugly, its long utilitarian shape scarred from the rigours of space and old wounds. Various generations of weapons, defence and sensor technology fought for space on its crowded hull. God was sending scanner information to our internal visual displays. It was quiet in the gunship except for the medic working. We were all watching the Warchilde’s manoeuvring engines burn as it took position in a higher orbit over the Vindictive’s position. I guessed it would be locking its various weapon systems on to the Vindictive, its onboard hackers preparing to repel boarders in the net. Despite the eighty years between them I could not see how a frigate could take on a light cruiser, not when the cruiser had the position. There was no answering hail from the Vindictive, however.

We watched in silence. I wondered how quiet the billions of other people watching these events unfold around the world were. Then it all happened at once. The stars seemed to wink out in a thin line between the Vindictive and the Warchilde. Black light, more Themtech. I saw the Warchilde rupture where the black light played over it.

On the net feed there was more white light as Ezekiel rode the answering hail to the cruiser. From the split-screen net feed I saw more of the white fire, so bright the image just whited out for a moment. The Warchilde’s net representation was of a grand, nineteenth-century ironclad. I watched it burn. Wolf attack programs and the Warchilde’s own hackers, mostly using knight icons, were also burnt by Ezekiel’s fire. I glanced at Morag, who was still now. The sedative would be dulling the terror of the angel dancing in the flickering flames.

In real space the Warchilde managed to fire its laser and missile batteries but the Vindictive filled the void with its anti-missile defence lasers. The frigate’s engines glowed blue in a neck-breaking, high-G manoeuvre as it moved out of harm’s way. The frigate’s black light was still cutting, and all over the world and orbit we watched as the Warchilde, in agonising, silent, slow motion, broke in two. I tried not to think about how much of what looked like debris from the ship was actually its crew. I watched the Vindictive manoeuvre at high Gs, making to rendezvous with Rolleston’s shuttle. Surely someone had to be able to get them now.

I was almost immured to the horror of Ezekiel hitting High Atlantis’ C amp;C. The angel burnt it like it had High Nyota Mlima and the Warchilde, providing cover for Rolleston’s assault shuttle to escape. The Vindictive fought and hacked its way to rendezvous with Rolleston’s shuttle.

The assault shuttle docked with the frigate. The Themtech on the frigate made it look like they were mating or the shuttle was being eaten. Its engines on high burn, I watched the Vindictive head out of orbit at speeds I could only assume would powder the crew’s bones and crush their internal organs. It travelled through a narrow tunnel it had hacked in Earth’s defences. Other orbitals attempted to target it, fighters and other system patrol ships attempted to intercept, but none of them were going to reach the Vindictive in time.

Worse, apparently scenes not unlike this were being played out all over orbit. Frigates of a similar design to the Vindictive, built for American and various western European space forces, were fighting their way out. These were the Black Squadrons, I guessed. Only two frigates, a German one called the Siegfried and the USS Perry, were successfully intercepted and destroyed. I felt tired as I watched the Vindictive set sail once it was free of the Earth’s gravitational pull, its induction sail blossoming before it disappeared from our screens.

It was Mudge who broke the deathly silence that had fallen over the tac net.

‘This is our impregnable system defence?’ he said, bitterness and incredulity warring in his voice.

‘He had the keys to the system. Besides, they weren’t attacking. Everything points out, not in,’ I told him. I was too depressed and fatigued to be properly impressed that he was still alive.

‘Not the actions of people who have nothing to hide,’ Pagan said. I think he was trying to salvage something from this debacle.

‘Where’s the Vindictive going?’ Gregor demanded. I guessed he was still back on the node. The gunship was slowly circling the massive structure of the Spoke. In a moment or two I’d be able to see the mess we’d help make of it.

‘Sirius,’ God answered. ‘Though the ships from the Black Squadrons are setting sail for each of the colonial systems.’

‘Will you be able to get there first?’ Gregor asked God.

‘I’m afraid not. I have left systems on a number of ships, but none of them have the capability of the Black Squadrons’ frigates,’ God said, and I knew that the Cabal would broadcast Demiurge as soon as they made it to the colonies.

‘They’ll infect Them with Crom,’ Gregor said.

‘From the information I have managed to collect,’ God said, the corroborating data scrolling across the screen and ready for anyone to download as he spoke, ‘only Rolleston had access to Crom.’

‘So Crom’s on the Vindictive?’ Gregor asked.

‘I believe that is the case,’ God said. I did not like how vague that sounded.

‘Why just Sirius?’ I asked. Surprisingly it was Gregor who answered.

‘That was the plan. Crom was less evolved than Demiurge – it was little more than a side project really – and Sirius is the greatest concentration of Them.’

‘What’s the worst-case scenario here?’ I said, sounding hollow and pointless even to myself.

‘What do you think?’ Gregor snapped uncharacteristically. ‘They take control of all four colonial fleets and Them forces in the Sirius system and then come back here.’

‘The worst-case scenario is more war,’ Rannu said quietly.

‘Between humans,’ Pagan said. He sounded broken. How had it gone wrong so quickly?