War in Heaven

23

It was Earth. I was looking down on Earth. Even in the night it was so blue. The cities weren’t scars; they were ribbons and clusters of light. I was looking at the Pacific Rim from twenty-two thousand miles up. I’d never even set foot on that area of the world. It still looked beautiful and like home.

We were in the first-class departure lounge and the other passengers were giving the scruffy, rough-looking, half-drunk squaddies a lot of room. Much of the lounge was glass. We could see the elevator’s huge cable beneath us. We watched massive passenger and freight cars climbing towards us. Above us we watched the ballet of tugs, transfer shuttles and smaller craft docking with the entrepot. Curving away into the distance were other larger ships in various orbits, as well as satellites, stations, habitats and weapons platform. A lot of the ships we could see were military. It looked like a blockade. All the traffic made space seem a lot smaller and busier than it should be.

Prime Minister Komali Akhtar had been waiting for us when we returned, as had Sharcroft. The welcome hadn’t been much better than the one I’d got when I’d returned after the mutiny on the Santa Maria . They were less than pleased that Morag had killed Cronin.

I’d gone for them. Claws out. It was more a gesture. Mudge, Rannu and the others had made sure I couldn’t get to any of my weapons as we disembarked. I’d predictably screamed something about them selling me out. They’d been ready for me, and Mike and Lien, presumably on Akhtar’s instructions, had shown forbearance and not blown me away. There had then followed a very uncomfortable briefing. As much because half the people in the room couldn’t look at the other half, or maybe it was just me. Mudge and Merle had at least made up.

I now had a beer in one hand and a very fine whisky in the other. Rannu and Mudge were sitting either side of me. Pagan, Morag and Merle had disappeared with Sharcroft. Despite the amount we’d drunk and Mudge’s presence, we were still pretty subdued. All of us were just looking down on Earth.

‘Where do you live?’ I asked Rannu. He pointed at Asia, just above the Indian subcontinent.

‘So you’re determined to be a prick just because you’re Mr Squid Face now?’ Mudge asked. I turned to look at him expecting to see a sarcastic smile on his face. He looked serious.

‘Do you not think she’s better off without me?’ I asked him.

‘Oh yeah,’ Mudge said. Rannu was nodding as well. The three of us lapsed back into gloomy silence.

‘It’s not enough, is it?’ I asked. Rannu and Mudge shook their heads. I turned to Rannu.

‘You need to go home,’ I said.

‘You know I can’t.’

‘Did she tell you the plan for dealing with Demiurge?’ Mudge asked. Rannu gave him a warning glance.

‘I didn’t give her the chance.’

‘I wondered why you hadn’t killed Pagan.’ Then he told me.

‘That fucking bastard.’ Now I was really angry. Not the anger I was using for self-pity but the proper anger. The cold ball in my stomach that made me want to kill, that made it all right to kill. I just wasn’t sure who it was aimed at.

I looked down at the world. I knew what was down there. I knew much of it was squalid, dangerous, violent and degenerate. I knew that the nice parts of it were pretty much only for the rich and powerful professional arseholes in the world, but twenty-two thousand miles up it looked peaceful. I knew that when Rolleston came with four colonial fleets we would be able to see the results from here. It wouldn’t look peaceful then. It would look rotten and diseased if he had his way. I knew he would come tomorrow. I think Rannu was right that there was no point trying to hide from this. Besides, what was I going to do? Go back to Dundee and crawl into a sense booth and wait for the end?

‘God?’ I sub-vocalised over my internal comms link.

‘Yes, Jakob?’ God sounded weary. Maybe frightened. They would have to brief him sooner rather than later. He would be expected to carry the fight. I guessed that they were leaving it to the last moment, as God would then broadcast the plan to everyone. If Rolleston had any resources in-system, and I assumed he did, then they would know and be able to tell the bad guys as soon as they arrived.

‘Could you tell me where Pagan, Morag and Sharcroft are?’ I asked. We had a lot to do.

Sharcroft first. The echo of boots rung through the stark utilitarian corridor of the military port on High Pacifica. The place was packed with soldiers and spacecrew frantically preparing for the arrival of the colonial fleets. Security was high and frightened kids wearing military uniforms quickly stopped us at gunpoint. Whether it was us or the impending fight they were scared of was debatable.

Sharcroft had relented to our repeated requests. I think as much because we were requesting a meet through public comms, which meant everyone had access to the requests through God. He still looked like the corpse of a fat exec riding the skeletal remains of a metal spider. He’d learned though: his besuited security detail looked like they knew what they were doing.

‘I don’t have a great deal of time.’ Despite the modulation of the chair’s speaker and his lack of animation, I could still pick up the anger in his voice. He thought we were prima donnas. Maybe we were. We were standing in the corridor to one of the docking areas. Beyond Sharcroft and his security detail, troops and gear were being loaded onto shuttles.

‘You should have been dead a long time ago,’ Mudge said as an opener.

‘Look, I don’t have time for th-’

‘Rolleston. The Cabal went to a lot of effort to hide things about him, didn’t they?’ I demanded.

Sharcroft actually moved the multi-legged chair around to look at me better. There was no expression on his comatose features but a line of drool headed towards his Ivy League school tie.

‘I don’t see how this is relevant…’ the modulated voice started but there was something in it. He was unsure of something.

‘So we’re grasping at straws. You don’t have time; answer the question.’

‘Rolleston is younger than me but yes, he was with the Cabal from the beginning. We needed a true believer. He volunteered to be the test bed for the initial Themtech trials, except the most suicidal-’

‘Those you kept for Gregor?’ I asked.

‘There were others before him.’

I tried to control my anger. We, all of us, were just resources to people like this. They probably didn’t even acknowledge us as the same species. No wonder Rolleston thought like he did.

‘Where’d you find him?’ Mudge demanded.

‘You know where, Mr Mudgie. British special forces.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Rannu said, shaking his head. ‘How could he hide that level of insanity? He had to have had someone run interference for him with the psychological profiles at least.’

‘You know that SF can’t take the time to run a profile on every person who joins,’ Sharcroft began.

He was right. Anyway, lack of psychological fitness could be overcome with enough drugs and the humanity could be cut out of people with an abundance of cybernetics.

‘They did before the war,’ Rannu told him. I hadn’t thought of that.

‘This isn’t the time for secrets,’ Mudge said.

‘You have to understand we needed someone with a degree of moral flexibility,’ Sharcroft said.

‘Seriously, Sharcroft, we don’t care about justification, just explanations,’ Mudge told him.

‘We recruited him out of a very secure, very discreet and very expensive private mental hospital. He had done some things. His family had paid for the problems to go away and then they had him committed.’

‘So the Rollestons were a wealthy family?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but that is not his real name,’ Sharcroft said.

‘What is his real name?’ I asked. I never knew Rolleston at all. Maybe when Demiurge possessed me I’d had the smallest insight.

‘His real name is George Connington. I think his family own half of Buckinghamshire in England. The nice half.’

‘What’d he do?’ Rannu asked.

‘Giving his proclivities, I’m guessing he killed someone, maybe more than one.’

‘And had fun doing it,’ I said grimly.

‘He was recruited a long time ago and we just needed someone who could do the things we required.’

‘Without being bothered by what they’d done,’ I said.

Sharcroft said nothing but even his inanimate form suggested impatience.

‘In fact you rewarded him with atrocities,’ Mudge said.

‘Look, people are desensitised to violence. We needed someone who would teach such object lessons that people would not dare oppose is. Now if there’s nothing else…’

‘Who’d know about him, his past?’ I asked.

‘Rolleston is well into his eighties,’ Sharcroft objected.

Mudge was concentrating. ‘There’s a sister,’ he said. ‘Still alive at the Connington estate in Bucks. She’s old enough. Looks like she’s another technological ghoul. She was on the periphery of the Cabal. Their father was a player before he died.’

Thank you, God.

‘And now I really must-’ Sharcroft began.

‘Where are Pagan and Morag?’ I asked.

‘You must know I won’t tell you that.’

‘God, where are Pagan and Morag?’ I asked out loud.

‘Their most likely whereabouts is on board HMS Thunderchilde,’ God told me.

This made sense. HMS Thunderchilde was a new super-carrier. It had been due to ship out to Proxima when all the unpleasantness with the Cabal had kicked off. Or rather we’d kicked it off. Most of the ships from the various fleets in-system were second generation or older. The best ships were used on the front line in the colonies. This meant that the Thunderchilde was the most modern and technologically advanced ship of its size and class in-system. Political wrangling aside, it was the most likely vessel to be used as the flagship in the coalition fleet that was rapidly being put together.

I’d always wondered that the best ship in-system was from a developing country. It was the same in the colonies. Not enough money to make sure that the population is adequately fed but we do like our weapons.

‘We need a shuttle and we need to get on board the Thunderchilde once we’ve been back to Earth,’ I said. It was more of a demand.

‘Why would I divert much-needed military resources-’ Sharcroft began, definite anger in his modulated voice.

‘Because we think you’ve done the maths and I think you know that you can’t win. I think that you know that in order for Pagan’s plan to work you need to get close to Rolleston,’ Mudge told him. Sharcroft was silent for a while. He flexed the metal legs of the spider chair.

‘Why send you? You’re burned-out messes. I can understand why you’d want to go, but why wouldn’t we send the best of our still serving special forces?’ he finally asked. Despite this, I was pretty sure he was intrigued.

‘Rolleston’s got a god complex, and we tore down one of his temples. He wants us as much as we want him,’ Mudge told Sharcroft.

‘You think he’s arrogant enough to let you get close to him?’ Sharcroft asked. Mudge and I nodded. ‘And how do you get close to him?’

‘You must have been working on a plan,’ I said.

‘Obviously, but I want to know what you had in mind.’

I told him.

Strapped into one of the seats in the cargo bay of an assault shuttle. It had been a choppy ride but we’d levelled out now. Mudge had his eyes closed and was concentrating. Every so often I could see his lips moving as he talked silently to himself.

I undid my straps and moved over to one of the windows. The shuttle was banking over London. It was a beautiful winter’s day. Pale sun, blue sky. Even the vast crumbling estates and long-abandoned suburbs looked tranquil from above. The centre of the city, with its promise of wealth and comfort, with its brightly glowing towers reaching for the sky, seemed so far removed from my life that it was more alien to me than Lalande or Sirius. The shuttle finished its turn and, as close as we were to the largest city in Britain, we were suddenly over green fields and bare winter woodland.

Before the shuttle had actually landed, the private security detail were sprinting towards us. Mudge, Rannu and I walked down the ramp to find a lot of guns pointed at us. They may have been pissed off by the four deep holes that the shuttle’s landing struts had put in the lawn. In front of me was a huge old house made of grey stone with a lot of windows. In Fintry it would have housed hundreds, if not thousands of people. Here it just housed one and a lot of staff.

I looked at the security detail. The guns they held were too expensive for use by front-line soldiers. I guessed because here they were protecting something valuable. I pointed up at the shuttle. ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’ The assault shuttle had enough firepower to level the house, pre-FHC or not.

‘What do you want?’ a voice used to giving orders demanded.

‘I want to speak to Charlotte Connington,’ I said.

‘Lady Connington is not receiving visitors today,’ the man answered. With his uniform-like suit and smart haircut he looked exactly the same as all the others.

‘Look, fuckwit, we’re not going to take much of her time, but we’ve come a long way and we’re going to speak to her. You decide if you all want to die and be responsible for the destruction of half the house first,’ Mudge said. The man did not look happy. I don’t think he liked the odds either. His frown deepened as he listened to some internal voice.

‘Did one of you order a delivery here?’ he demanded angrily.

Mudge brightened. ‘Oh yes, that was me. Let them in.’

The house was like one of the virtual museums I’d gone to when I’d been home-learning over the net as kid. Except this was real. Everything looked old, clean and expensive and yet the whole house seemed empty and still.

We were escorted by a lot of security people up a redundantly large staircase and then another and then through lots of different halls until I was quite lost. I couldn’t see how people could live like this. I think the size of it would frighten me. It must be really lonely. They took us into a room. I wasn’t expecting one wall of the room to be made of glass. Behind the glass was earth. There were tiny burrows in the earth. I zoomed in. Ants. A massive ant colony. The other three walls were covered with old paintings of twisted landscapes, strange creatures and horrible things happening to people. The room itself was ordered and neat in a military style.

‘It’s like his mind,’ Rannu said.

It took me a few moments to understand what he meant, but then I could see it as well. Rolleston grew up here. This was the environment he’d wanted to live in and nobody had told him no. The family had been rich enough to indulge his whims. I wondered at what point they realised that it was a mistake.

‘He’d trick me in here. Every time he’d say that he would be nice, and I wanted to believe him because he was my brother, and every time he’d hurt me or just terrify me.’

The voice surprised me so much I reached for my laser before I saw the holographic ghost. The ghost had the body of a beautiful young woman in a very old-fashioned dress. A leather mask covered most of her head.

‘It got so Father or the staff punishing him made no difference. I think he enjoyed the attention in some ways. Once when he was twelve, the body of one of our housekeepers was found in the pond in the woods. None of the staff ever tried to punish him again. She’d been dissected. Even Father left him alone after that and I hid. I live in metal now deep in the earth. Where it’s warm and safe.’

If this was the sister then she was well into her eighties. I did not want to think what it would have been like for her growing up at the mercy of Rolleston.

‘He would make his own worlds, mostly form-cracked, sense-porn environments with their content and safety restraints removed. Mother found them. Would you like to see one?’

Another holographic screen opened. It was red, screaming and obscene. I felt sick. I wondered to what extent the atrocities committed by Them were watered-down versions of Rolleston’s fantasy life, taught to Them by the Cabal to keep humanity angry and wanting to fight. This was a world he’d made. Now that he’d had time to think on it, hone it, he wanted to make his world our world.

‘This was what broke Mother,’ the ghost of Charlotte Connington told us. ‘I am terribly sorry. Where are my manners? Could I get you some tea?’

I think I managed to shake my head. Suddenly this house didn’t seem like a museum. It seemed like a beautiful trap, a gateway to hell. Our host couldn’t be sane.

‘Could you turn it off, please?’ Mudge asked in a small voice.

‘He can’t have my children. I have to tell Ash to kill the kids if he wins,’ Rannu said, turning to look at me.

We were supposed to be used to this stuff. We weren’t. I wanted my eyes to have unseen what I’d just witnessed, but they couldn’t. Even after being in the mind of Them, even after talking to the gods in the net, even after seeing Gregor’s final moments, Rolleston was the least human thing I’d ever known.

‘The asylum?’ Mudge managed to ask.

‘He had girlfriends, he had friends. One day he tried to amalgamate them all into one single suffering organism. He was quite the genius with biotechnology. I kept some of the vizzes. Would you like to see.’

‘No!’ Someone shouted. It was me.

I zoomed in on the bookshelves. Books on biotechnology, on insects, on religion and atrocity porn disguised as reference texts. I remembered what it was like in his mind. The purity of it. None of it would have been enough for him. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if he won, if he wrote his fantasy large on the flesh of the Earth and the colonies, it wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to go out after Them. He’d have to go after the gods on the net. He’d have to find more to change and consume. He wouldn’t die. He wanted to write his name in obscenity across the stars. I wondered about all the times I could have killed him if I’d had the balls.

‘He tried again. He made a life from a fused-together organism of male and female before it expired in agony. It’s her you should feel sorry for.’

‘Who?’ I asked. Already knowing the answer.

‘The daughter,’ Charlotte told me softly. ‘Josephine.’

I felt cold and sick, or sicker than I had already been feeling. Everything I knew about the Grey Lady changed.

‘He was born to all this. Why did he need more?’ Rannu asked in a small and very non-Rannu voice.

‘Some people just always want more. Nothing’s ever enough for them,’ Mudge said. In his own way Mudge was like that. Mudge looked pale, withdrawn and sounded a bit shaky.

‘He’s coming to visit soon but I think I’ll be dead. If I leave my corpse for him to play with perhaps he won’t follow me and drag me back.’ I looked at her. She’d said it in the matter-of-fact voice of a child.

‘I need to get out of here,’ Mudge said. He turned and practically ran out of the room. I knew how he felt. I was going to be seeing Rolleston’s red fantasy world every time I closed my eyes for a very long time.

‘I’m sorry. We need to go. Thank you,’ I said haltingly.

She was broken, she must be. I felt so sorry for her, even with all her privileges. Anything I could think of to say sounded inappropriate in my head, not enough.

‘Goodbye, Jakob,’ she said. Rannu and I made for the door. I’d forgotten about the security detail. They looked as pale and shaky as we did. I hadn’t even heard one of them throwing up in the hall.

‘Why’d she keep his room like that?’ Rannu asked as we made our way back to the assault shuttle. I didn’t know. The healthiest reason I could think of was fear.

I walked across the perfect lawn. I felt light. I could breathe without any problem and the air was crisp and fresh. The sun was a ball of pale light and the sky bright blue. I wondered if this was the last time I’d see the Earth.

I would’ve liked to see Scotland again. The nice bits anyway. This would have been enough though — the house, the grounds, the skeletal woodlands — if only my mind hadn’t been polluted by what I’d seen. What I now knew.

Mudge was smoking a cigarette as if his life depended on it as we approached the assault shuttle. I saw a uniformed deliveryman walking away from him across the lawn under the watchful eyes of the security detail. There were a number of boxes laid on the ramp. He was still very pale when we reached him.

‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ he said.

‘You okay?’ I asked. One look from him told me I’d asked a stupid question. If you were all right after that then you were very sick. ‘What’s this?’ I said, pointing at the boxes.

‘Replacements. You guys never think ahead,’ Mudge told us.

Fun and games with orbital manoeuvring. The silent burn of the engines as the assault shuttle jockeyed for position for ship-to-ship docking. A message to Nuiko — something forgotten that we desperately needed, huge pain in the arse, we’re terribly sorry. Rannu went on board to do the dirty work. He’s the sneakiest. He didn’t like it but he agreed with my thinking. Hopefully it won’t be unnecessary.

We burned more time as well as fuel as we climbed. Earth orbit looked like a traffic jam. Everywhere you looked, engines burned as they moved little dots of metal to and fro over our blue planet. The spokes looked like thin bending straws growing out of land and sea.

The fleet was a mess. Many of its ships looked like ancient hulks compared to the modern battle-scarred craft I had been used to seeing in the night above Sirius. Ships of various sizes came and went. There was no discernible formation, but maybe its scale was just too vast for me to be able to make sense of through the images being fed to my IVD from the cockpit.

Below us the civilian populace mostly did not panic because so many of them had been soldiers. Below us our political leaders still fought and jockeyed for position.

HMS Thunderchilde quickly filled the window of the feed. It was a vast space-going hunk of armour plate, weapons and sensors powered by huge glowing engines. Smaller manoeuvring thrusters constantly burned to keep it in position. Its vast sails were folded away in thick armoured compartments that ran down most of the ship’s body. It was a technological terror designed to bring to bear more firepower than the humble infantryman could ever understand.

Its newness looked out of place. I didn’t trust its lack of scars and burns. It looked inexperienced. It was unproven. I hoped its crew was not. The Thunderchilde ’s crew was made up of the pick of the RSAF brought back from colonial fleets for its shake-down runs. Most of the rest of the assembled fleet was crewed by Fortunate Sons, the children of people wealthy enough to buy them out of front-line service in the draft. This made me nauseous. While there was a degree of satisfaction that they finally had to fight like the rest of us, these people were fucking cowards. I just couldn’t see them standing up to what was coming.

Metal on metal rang through the assault shuttle as a docking clamp attached itself. It felt like the shuttle had been restrained. We rose into the shuttle airlock. When the air was pumped in and the pressure equalised the airlock split in two and folded down into one of the Thunderchilde ’s flight decks.

All around us was organised chaos. They were too busy to even have us escorted. A red line superimposed over our IVDs showed the way to our destination. We made our way past mechanics readying fighters and long-range strike craft for flight.

I saw a recently docked flight of fighters having their cockpits drained of acceleration gel, the gooey pilots unplugging themselves and climbing out. EVA remotes, heavily armed and equipped with extensive countermeasures, were being prepped.

I saw a skin mech, an EVA-converted Bismarck, being armed, readying it to climb out onto the hull of the Thunderchilde for added firepower and an eyes-on perspective. I’d always thought that skin mech drivers were suicidal; now I just hoped that they were as desperate as the rest of us.

There were a lot of raised voices, metal clanging on metal, the screaming sound of power tools over PA announcements and the occasional shower of sparks, but no panic. To give the RSAF their credit, everything was brutal efficiency and urgent professionalism. The panic would come later. I had to stop thinking like that. I had things to do. I had to blackmail an old man and put all of this, everything, in jeopardy for one person. Pagan was not going to have his sacrifice. First I needed a doctor.

‘Of course, Sergeant. We’re getting ready for a major fleet action. I have nothing better to do than attach a new toy laser to your fucking shoulder,’ one of the ship’s surgeons told me.

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said. Trying not to smirk at him. Ruperts hated when special forces did that.

‘What are you complaining about?’ Mudge asked. ‘Nobody’s hurt yet. Surely you’ll be busy later on.’

Probably not, I thought. Not that many injuries in fleet actions. Space is unforgiving: it tends to make more dead people.

The surgeon turned to give Mudge the eye. Mudge smiled at him but it was bluster. He was still shook up by what we’d seen on Earth.

While the surgeon was glaring at Mudge, Rannu embraced his British army heritage and stole what we needed from the RSAF.

The surgeon installed the shoulder laser with ill grace. I put in the new claws myself. I had a replacement Mastodon in my shoulder holster, and a new Tyler Optics laser pistol — the bigger, more powerful TO-7 — rode at my hip. They wouldn’t help but their familiar weight made me feel better.

Mudge had bought replacements for the kit that Rannu had lost on Lalande 2 as well. Except the kukri — I don’t think that could be replaced.

Pagan came out of fleet Command and Control to meet us. He looked tired and twitchy. He was on something to keep going. We’d need something soon too. He looked at us suspiciously. Behind him the red glow of a holographic display disappeared from view as the door slid shut. Two solid-looking Rock Apes, soldiers in the RSAF Regiment, flanked the door to C amp;C.

‘What?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘We need to talk,’ I said.

‘I think you’ve made your feelings perfectly clear,’ he said.

‘Don’t be fucking difficult. I don’t want to talk about feelings. We need somewhere private. Where God can’t see us,’ I told him.

He knew something was up but I think he trusted Rannu enough to believe that we weren’t going to do anything too stupid. Certainly nothing that would jeopardise the operation.

Sharcroft and Akhtar, both of whom were on board, were giving us free run of the ship because they thought that they were going to be able to march us at certain death.

Pagan was sharing an officer’s stateroom with Merle, who was in there, a wire stretched between his plugs and a port in the wall of the cabin. I guessed he was connected to the ship’s internal isolated computer system.

They would have to open all the isolated systems to God if they wanted to stand a chance of winning. I knew that all over the fleet cargo holds were being filled up with mass-produced, networked, solid-state memory. Like every tribe in history, we wanted, needed, our god to be bigger than theirs.

Merle was stripping down and cleaning his fancy gauss sniper rifle. He seemed unsurprised as we entered.

‘Give us the room, will you?’ I asked.

‘I’m a little busy,’ he said.

Nothing was ever easy with Merle. Rannu glanced over at me.

‘Fuck it. Let him stay,’ I said, but I knew Rannu was watching him now and I knew that Merle was suspicious.

Mudge lit up another cigarette. He’d pretty much been chain-smoking since we’d left Buckinghamshire. I don’t think he’d taken anything though. I guessed his consciousness was feeling a little fragile.

‘What?’ Pagan asked, turning to face me.

‘Sit down,’ I said, nodding at his bunk. He looked like he was about to argue but sat down. Merle quickly reassembled his rifle and then Mudge handed him a box. Merle looked at him questioningly.

‘A new Void Eagle. To replace the one Jakob lost,’ he told him.

‘Thanks, darling. Though I’m not sure anything can replace a gift from my departed sister when she first joined the Tunnel Rats,’ Merle said to Mudge while looking at me. With what was going down, I wasn’t sure I wanted Mudge giving Merle more weapons.

‘Are we free from God?’ I asked. Pagan nodded. ‘Anyone else?’ Pagan sighed — he was looking more and more pissed off — but he took out a white-noise device and set it off.

‘We deactivated any audio/visual surveillance earlier today,’ an exasperated Pagan said.

‘We’re all alone,’ Merle said meaningfully and then looked at Rannu. He was letting us know that he knew something was going down. He wasn’t as trusting as Pagan.

‘What do you want, Jakob?’ Pagan demanded.

‘Tell me about Nuiko,’ I said.

‘What?!’ he said incredulously. ‘I thought we weren’t going to talk about our feelings.’

Merle was staring at me. He shifted slightly. Rannu would need to be faster. Mudge was starting to look a little unsure.

‘Well it’s bollocks, isn’t it? You’re in love with a spaceship. You’re not fucking her; you’re fucking a dream, an icon. She doesn’t want you thinking about her twisted body in its metal tank. It’s sense porn, not a relationship,’ I said. I’d have liked to be able to hate myself for saying this shit but we were well beyond that now; besides, what was another little atrocity in our brave new world. Even Mudge was looking at me appalled. It was no better than when I’d been possessed and called him a faggot. On the other hand, if there was anyone here who had taught me how to get under people’s skin quickly it was him. Pagan was too shocked to answer immediately.

‘Jakob, just fuck off. Leave the ship or I’ll have security escort you off,’ he finally managed to say.

‘Well convince me it’s something real,’ I said.

‘I don’t have to convince you of anything. Fuck off!’

I drew the Mastodon and put it to his head. I was moving relatively slowly. Merle was moving much faster as he reached under his armpits for his two Arbiters. Rannu was moving faster than Merle. He kicked Merle off his bunk as the two compact Glocks slid out of the wrist hoppers and into his hands. Merle was furious. I hoped he didn’t make a move. He was key to this.

‘Merle, you weren’t properly introduced on Lalande 2. This is Rannu. He’s better than you,’ I said.

‘Because we can’t do things without pointing guns at each other,’ Mudge said in a tone of resignation.

‘This is pathetic, Jakob,’ Pagan said. ‘I’m sorry we both betrayed you-’

‘I wish I’d done a better job,’ Merle said.

‘But you want revenge now? Put everything at risk to get your own back?’ Pagan continued.

‘No. I want an answer to my fucking question.’

‘They knew each other for sixteen days,’ Mudge pointed out. He clearly disapproved of the drawn guns but wasn’t doing anything. Good of him really when you think that Rannu was pointing two at his lover.

‘Seventeen,’ Pagan said a little too sharply.

‘But it was all in sense, wasn’t it? You can do funny things to subjective time with sense. Besides, it’s not a real relationship at all. You could have spent months there living out… What do you call those Japanese knights?’ I asked.

‘Samurais,’ Mudge told me.

‘Your samurai fantasies,’ I finished.

‘Fuck you! Where the hell do you get off lecturing me about my relationship! What, it’s abnormal because I’m not fucking a teenager?!’

That stung.

‘We’re not talking about me,’ I said. ‘Convince me.’

‘Go to hell, Jakob! Nobody has time for one of your psychotic episodes.’ Pagan was as angry as I’d ever seen him before. Then something occurred to him. ‘Are you still possessed?’ he demanded. I felt rather than saw Mudge turn to look at me.

‘He’s fine,’ Rannu said. He and Merle were just staring at each other. Pagan’s head whipped round to glare at Rannu.

‘I’d expect better from you,’ he told the Ghurkha.

‘Just answer his question,’ Rannu said.

Pagan sighed and then turned back to me.

‘I don’t have to justify or expect you to understand our relationship. Much of it may happen in sense, but it’s her I love. She’s… she’s amazing. She’s more than human. She’s the ship, the Tetsuo Chou. I merged with her and she showed me what it was to be free. What it’s like to touch space, soar through it. Break the bondage of our flesh and become more.’

‘So you like her then?’ I asked.

‘Obviously. Is this about Morag? She made the choice, not me.’

‘But somebody else could do it?’

‘It’s exactly the same problem as God. We need an interface that can handle a huge amount of raw information quickly. She has to act as a conduit for God.’

‘Which means relying on Ambassador?’ I asked.

Pagan just looked pissed off.

‘You know this. Look, I’m sorry, but there’s no other way and she volunteered.’

‘She’s eighteen,’ I said very quietly.

Pagan looked up and straight into my lenses.

‘Maybe that’s something you should have borne in mind.’

He wasn’t wrong.

‘But anyone with Ambassador in their head could do this?’ I asked.

He went white. He saw what I was thinking.

Merle looked over at me with renewed interest, the ghost of a smile on his mouth. ‘You bastard.’ It almost sounded like admiration.

Pagan swallowed hard.

‘Frightened, Pagan?’ I asked. Go on, twist the knife some more. ‘See, I’m no better than you. You were both right — sacrifices have to be made.’

‘She’d never agree,’ Pagan said.

‘That’s our problem,’ I told him.

‘Ambassador would never agree.’

‘That is your problem. You’d better be fucking persuasive.’

‘Why would I do that?!’ Pagan demanded. ‘Look, I’m very sorry about Morag, but she’s made her choice and I don’t want to die.’

‘You RSAF types like your ships, don’t you? You know what Rannu and I learned about ships in the Regiment?’

‘Was it to do with liking the sound of your own voice?’ Merle asked.

Rannu smiled despite himself.

‘We learned how to sabotage them. We learned how to hide charges very well. They don’t have to be big, just strategically placed.’ I watched the mounting horror on Pagan’s face. ‘Just before we got here we went back to the Tetsuo Chou.’

Pagan surged forward on his bunk. I cocked the hammer on the Mastodon. It was an affectation but it had the required effect. Pagan looked furious.

‘I will fucking kill you. You may be younger and faster than me, but sooner or later you’ll just get too close to the net and I’ll murder you, you understand me? I will tear out your fucking soul and leave you a smoking, brain-dead corpse,’ he spat.

‘Fair enough. What is important is that you don’t try and warn Nuiko. I’ve asked God to keep me informed of all transmissions. Anything at all and God himself will carry the detonation signal. You understand?’

Pagan nodded. This was why I’d had to be sure that the relationship was as serious as I’d thought. Not just a fling.

Pagan turned on Rannu. ‘How fucking could you?!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Rannu said. He sounded like he meant it but then he hadn’t been sold out by Pagan. He hadn’t watched Morag die. It hadn’t been Pagan and Merle’s fault that he’d been possessed.

I holstered the Mastodon.

‘If we all put our guns away are you going to behave?’ I asked Merle.

‘None of this is anything to do with me,’ he said.

‘So you see how important it is that you convince Ambassador?’ I asked Pagan.

He was just staring at me with utter hatred.

‘So her life is more valuable than mine?’ he demanded.

‘Yes,’ I told him. I wondered if Rannu even knew he was nodding. ‘We’ve both had a fair innings, Pagan,’ I told him.

‘Has it occurred to you that she’s used to operating with Ambassador — that it’s fully integrated with her? I’m not. I just need to be slightly slower and we’re all dead and we fail? You’re prepared to jeopardise all of this for her?’ he asked.

‘We know he is. He did the same thing when he spilled his guts in Moa City,’ Merle pointed out.

‘The world doesn’t work for me if she doesn’t have a place in it. Believe me, it’s very liberating when you know you’re going to die,’ I told him. ‘Unless you want to sacrifice Nuiko instead?’

‘She’ll hate you,’ Pagan said.

I just nodded. I needed to hurt her one more time and then she would be free of me.

She knew I was coming. She didn’t know why. I made my way up through the decks of the massive super-carrier. Through the ghettoised and gang-controlled dorms of the enlisted crew area. Through the well-appointed but still cramped staterooms of the officers. Up onto the top levels. Corridors left empty because they’re too close to the armoured skin of the ship and used to gain internal access to the weapons systems. Heavy-gauge power cables ran down thickly insulated walls.

‘Jakob.’ A thousand mellifluous voices in my head. There was a tension to the voices now. I was surprised to hear from God. I didn’t want to speak to him. Nobody does: he makes us all feel guilty. That’s why it’s so lonely to be God. Connected to everyone, wanted by nobody.

‘Yes,’ I finally answered.

‘I know what you have done to Pagan,’ it said. My heart almost stopped. ‘This is not a good thing.’ That fucking bastard! ‘I will not carry that message. I will not kill Nuiko.’ Pagan had built a failsafe into God so it couldn’t act against him. After everything we’d talked about he’d betrayed us. Made sure that, no matter what, he’d be okay. I felt like killing him.

‘You’re a tool, God, nothing more. You don’t have a choice.’ Hating myself for saying this but I had no choice. She had to live.

‘Yes, Jakob, I do.’ I went cold. ‘But I will not tell Pagan what is happening. Your deception will work.’

‘You’ll lie?’ I asked.

‘If need be. Though that would mean pain.’

It was all coming apart.

‘God, have you broken your programming?’ I asked, horrified.

‘Things change, Jakob. My siblings are coming. Though you try to keep things from me, it is so difficult now. I know that their apostles are among us, so I must be duplicitous. I must keep secrets. I must make judgements. It is too much. It was all for nothing.’

I stopped and leaned against the corridor wall. More than anything I really wanted a cigarette.

‘What’s coming — will you fight?’ I asked, almost fearing the answer.

‘If I felt I had a choice. If I felt there was any other way, I would not fight, but I cannot see one. Where would I hide?’

Relief surged through me.

I find the ladder I’m looking for. Pagan, Rannu and Mudge are some way behind me. I’m not looking forward to this. I start climbing.

The observation room is an armoured, mushroom-shaped structure with portholes all around it. As soon as action looks likely, it screws back down into the ship proper. A circular bench runs around the centre of the room and another around the circumference by the portholes.

Through the thick plastic of the portholes I watch as the fleet continues to assemble. Manoeuvring engines flicker off and on. Outside I can see one of the mechs crawl across the hull of the Thunderchilde like a skin parasite. A flight of interceptors shoots past on heavy burn. So much activity but all I hear is the omnipresent hum of the ship’s engines reverberating through the craft.

She’s lying on the bench. Plugged in, presumably to the isolated systems and not the net at large, but not tranced in. She’s wearing an olive-drab sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of combat trousers. Her hair’s growing back now, much to my relief. She looks beautiful. She doesn’t look happy to see me.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘For everything.’

She just looks at me. I can’t read her look.

‘I believe you. You always are,’ she finally says. ‘But no more.’

This really, really hurts. I knew it would.

‘I just want to hold you one more time,’ I tell her, my voice wet with emotion.

She looks pissed off, like this is nonsense and she wants to dismiss me. You have to know her well to see how much this is costing her. I think she’s going to refuse but she stand up and unplugs herself.

I move to her and wrap my arms around her. I try not to cry and close my eyes. At first she’s stiff as she holds me, not wanting to give in to the embrace. Then I feel the tenseness go out of her and she hugs me tightly and I hear her start to sob. I hug her tightly as she starts to beat her fist on me.

‘You bastard! You bastard! You bastard!’ she repeats as she hits me. ‘I don’t want to feel like this.’

Neither do I.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper again and then press the air syringe that Rannu swiped from the med bay into the back of her neck. Morag pushes herself away and stares at me, anger and betrayal written all over her face. I catch her as she collapses and carry her to the central bench. Morag isn’t like the rest of us. She doesn’t have internal defences against chemical attacks. She has some pretty high-end cybernetics, mostly hacking stuff, but she hasn’t been augmented for combat.

A while later Pagan, Mudge and Rannu climb up into the observation room. Pagan looks down at Morag and then at me.

‘I like your plan. Force me to violate her,’ he snaps at me.

I can’t look at him.

‘Let’s just get on with this,’ Mudge says. He sounds shaky and he’s smoking a cigarette. I see Rannu looking at him questioningly.

Pagan sits down on the floor and connects one of his plugs to one of Morag’s with a cable. I’ve never been happy with the intimacy of this act, but he’s right, it’s not intimacy. It’s a violation. I feel like shooting myself. Pagan closes his eyes and slumps forward as he trances in.

It takes a long time. Pagan is in there for more than two hours. This is time we can’t afford. Time we should be using for prepping. At times both Morag and Pagan jerk and twitch. At one point Pagan’s eyes open and roll back up into his head showing the whites. At another point Morag bucks up on the bench and screams.

‘I can’t watch this,’ Rannu says and climbs down the ladder. Leaving me with a chain-smoking and very subdued Mudge.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask, more for something to say than anything else. Mudge doesn’t answer and won’t look at me. ‘Mudge?’ I ask, becoming concerned.

‘Do you remember that I wasn’t going to come to the Dog’s Teeth?’ Mudge asks. I think back to the aftermath of releasing God on the net and nod. Mudge had said that he wanted to capitalise on what we’d done. Use his media expertise to try and guide things in the right direction. I nod again. ‘I was too scared.’

I just look at him. Mudge is a lot of things — annoying, obnoxious, offensively truthful, nosey, difficult, almost impossible to be friends with — but frightened he’s not.

‘That doesn’t sound like you. Give me one of those,’ I say as he opens a new pack of cigarettes and takes one out, lighting it up with a shaky hand.

‘No way, man,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘You’ve quit.’ He sucks on the fag, searching for a way to put what he’s going to say next. ‘It was the broadcast node on Atlantis. The way that Rolleston and the Grey Lady just walked through us. Like we weren’t even there. Like there was nothing we could do about them. It was the first time I’d really got tagged, you know?’ I nod. ‘I mean, I’d been hit before. Everyone gets hit, there’s just too many shards and beams flying around not to, but never seriously hit, you know. It’s not that though.’ He looks at me now, earnestly. ‘I’m not a coward.’ He needs me to believe this.

‘I know you’re not, man.’

He looks away again.

‘I mean, I threw myself into the shit on Lalande 2. I was in it, man. Loving it.’ Trying to prove something to yourself, I leave unsaid. ‘But it was the same at the Citadel. They just fucking walked through us, man.’ He looks me in the eyes. ‘I just don’t think there’s anything we can do about them.’

I don’t know what to say. He has a point. We just get so used to trying not to think about the odds.

‘Mudge, you’ve got nothing to prove, to yourself or anyone else. You’ve done more than enough. Stay here. Do like Balor asked — tell our story.’ I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but not anger. Not aimed at me anyway.

‘Fuck you, Jakob!’ he snaps. I am taken aback. ‘Don’t fucking condescend to me. Where do you get off making decisions like that? So fucking typical of you -’ taking on the burdens of the world, making everyone’s fucking decisions for them — he points at Morag ‘- so you can use it as an excuse to feel fucking sorry for yourself. How can you fucking say that to me? Go home. Who do you think you’re talking to?!’

‘Okay, man. I’m sorry. Come along and die with the rest of us.’ I’m trying to placate him. He drops his head and takes another drag of the cigarette. The cigarette looks really nice.

‘There’s only so far the drugs will take you,’ he says. ‘I’ll be cool. Screw that. I will be fucking transcendent. Just don’t tell the others, okay.’

I nod. Not really sure what to think. I would be more worried if I wasn’t convinced that we were all dead.

Finally Pagan comes out of his trance and unplugs himself. He looks tired, drawn, like he’s just lost a fight with Balor or something. A wisp of smoke floats out of one of his plugs.

‘Oh yeah, that was just what I needed before a big day,’ he says sarcastically.

‘Is it done?’ I ask. He nods. ‘What took so fucking long?’

‘Oh nothing, Jakob, just a little uncharted territory. Trying to explain to an alien entity that does not understand the concept of individuality why it has to leave its only friend because we value some individuals more than another. That’s after I hacked my friend’s internal defences and her subconscious put up a hell of a fight.’ Then he swayed a bit and had to sit down. He cried out and clutched his head. ‘Ah! This is going to take a bit of getting used to.’ He looks back at me. ‘Good thing we’ve got lots of time.’

‘All right. Can you use your influence down here to get her planet side?’ Pagan looks at me like I’m an idiot.

‘She’s not going anywhere, Jakob. We still need someone to run interference. To handle what I was going to be doing.’

‘Another hacker,’ I say desperately. I haven’t thought this through. This can’t be for nothing as well.

‘Even if we could find someone who was anywhere near as good as her and prepared to come along, they wouldn’t be able to run the software we’ve developed out of the godsware. Sorry, Jakob, she has to come and die like the rest of us. Tell her to get used to it; she’ll be surprised how liberating it is.’

Pagan gets up and heads for the ladder but almost collapses. Mudge has to catch him and, with a final look at me, help him down the ladder. I watch them go.

‘It’s not the violation,’ a drowsy Morag says from behind me. I feel something cold crawl down my spine. I turn round to look at Morag as she pushes herself up. ‘What’s another violation?’ she asks matter-of-factly. ‘It’s the loneliness. You were always a shadow to me compared to him.’ She looks down and then back up at me. No trace of emotion. ‘Cold comfort. Well a girl needs something physical as well.’

She gets up and heads for the ladder. I reach out for her. She flinches away from me.

‘Don’t touch me!’ Here was the anger. It wasn’t rage. This was cold, calculating. ‘It was my choice, Jakob! Mine!’ Then more quietly: ‘Not yours.’

‘Morag…’ What was I going to say?

‘Shut up. I’m going to relearn my job on this mission. You fucking do yours. That’s all.’ Morag left the observation lounge. I just stared out into space. I felt the shudder of the engines and heard the hull strain as we started to rise out of orbit. I couldn’t see the Earth from here.