War in Heaven

by Gavin G. Smith

‘ … you will be slaved.’

  What the fuck? I turned my attention back to Trace.

  ‘You will join our mining operation, except –’ he turned to Morag ‘– you’ll make an excellent addition to the executive-level vice operation. Initially anyway. You’ll work your way down and end up servicing the miners like all the others. Perhaps you’ll see your friends again. I understand you have the experience, otherwise I’d break you in myself.’

  Morag just looked bored. She’d heard it all before. I wanted to kill him. I was also wishing I’d been paying more attention.

  ‘Did he just say he was going to slave us?’ I double-checked.

  ‘Apparently so,’ Cat said. ‘Remind me again why we walked into this trap.’

  ‘Because Jakob keeps on hoping he’ll meet someone reasonable some day. Tell me, Wilson – it’s okay if I call you Wilson, isn’t it? I mean presumably it’ll be your sexy masterness when we’re all slaved,’ Mudge said.

  ‘Do you have a point?’ Trace asked. I was wondering the same thing.

  ‘Why’d you take the meeting?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘Because of our previous working relationship with Sharcroft.’

  ‘You did use to work with the Cabal then?’ Morag asked.

  ‘And you seem like such a nice guy,’ I muttered.

  ‘Really?’ Mudge asked. ‘Because you have to know, even with your guards this is dangerous. No, I think you’re gloating. Which is weird because what do you have against us?’ Mudge had such a good eye for weakness because he embraced his so openly. ‘How old are you, Wilson?’ Trace didn’t answer. He was starting to look angry. The sort of angry that came from being found out and not being able to argue back. ‘See, you fucking clones all look the same to me, but I’m guessing you’re in your late thirties, right? But the Savile Row suit, the Musamoko katana, Zeiss designer eyes … You were someone once, weren’t you? But this is a pretty shitty posting for a rising star.’

  ‘Go and fuck yourself!’ Trace spat. We weren’t accomplishing anything, but on the other hand the guy was a prick and didn’t mean us well so we may as well let Mudge go to town on him.

  Mudge leaned forward. ‘What did you get caught doing when God came to town?’ His manner was all mock concern. ‘Embezzlement? Too much crystal? Too much time in the sense booths? Fucking the boss’s kid? A penchant for farmyard frolics? Coprophilia? Has to be a weakness because it’s never going to be about being crooked or without morals, is it?’ Trace was going the kind of scarlet that only people who have been speaking to Mudge for any period of time can go. Judging by the response, Mudge must have been getting close to the heart of the matter. Just another person we’d reached out and touched. I glanced up at the lasers nervously.

  ‘Mudge, why don’t you give it a rest?’ Cat said. Her voice was heavy with implied threat. ‘Look, asshole,’ she continued diplomatically. ‘You’re only choice is take the money or we break him out. Don’t you want the cash? It’s a lot of fucking money.’ I couldn’t tell if she was bargaining, pleading or threatening.

  ‘I have to admit I was actually surprised by the size of Sharcroft’s offer to the company and my own gratuity. Sadly this ups the value of your brother as a prisoner so we’ll keep him to bargain for something important.’ I glanced over at Cat but she was staring at Trace. I almost groaned when I heard Mudge’s voice again. It seemed like he wasn’t going to be happy until someone got killed.

  ‘You did a profit-and-loss projection. Didn’t you?’ Mudge asked. Suddenly we were talking about something else. I wasn’t sure if it was the conversation or Mudge’s train of thought I wasn’t following. I watched Trace swallow several times as he sought to control himself. The calmness that spread over his features looked like it was narcotic. It would be drug-administered from his internal reservoirs, the sort execs use to calm themselves in the boardroom.

  ‘I think our meeting is over,’ Trace said, then to his guards: ‘Please see them to their new jobs.’

  We didn’t move. Pre-violence tension just kept building. I tried calculating our chances. I didn’t like the rotary laser element.

  Trace turned to Morag. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’ It was a threat.

  He was dead. Well he was dead if the lasers and the guards didn’t get me first. I just wished I didn’t feel like I was moving in slow motion. I scratched at the inhibitor jack in one of my neck plugs. Pointlessly; metal and plastic didn’t have any nerve endings.

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ Morag protested. I wasn’t sure how seriously she was taking this. I think hanging around with us was making her a little too blasé.

  ‘You did a profit-and-loss forecast based on the coming conflict. You modelled who would win, or more likely who would pay more. Do the Earth governments know?’ Mudge asked. Now I saw it.

  ‘If someone like you could work it out, what do you think? What? You think they’re going to stop dealing with us? They need our resources. They’re preparing for war.’

  ‘Fucking parasite,’ Cat muttered.

  ‘You’re a collaborator?’ I asked incredulously. I don’t know why I was surprised. It was all flies to shit.

  ‘Oh grow up,’ he sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. ‘Your schoolboy revolutionary act is no doubt great fun, but adults run the system and business is the fuel. Now go and get slaved like the good little victims you are before I have your flesh turned to steam.’

  Something unpleasant occurred to me. ‘Why not just kill us?’ I asked.

  ‘Because we’ll make a nice little gift when Rolleston and his friends come in-system,’ Mudge said.

  ‘You want to hand us to them?’ Morag demanded. Trace didn’t answer, but for a moment I saw his concentration waver as if he was listening to someone else. Then he was with us again.

  ‘Because he’s begging for favours,’ Mudge added. ‘Because despite business models and all that other bollocks, he knows that Rolleston, Cronin and their friends are going to fucking eat him. Don’t you, little man?’

  I wondered if it was the little man comment that tipped it. I saw it; Cat saw it; Mudge would have seen it; and I guessed Morag had been through enough of this shit with us to know what was coming next. The decision to kill us was written all over Trace’s face. I wondered how Mudge thought we were going to get out of this.

  It went black. Then the lights flickered so quickly they were almost strobing. My flash compensators kicked in and I saw the look of surprise on Trace’s face. Fortunately he was surprised enough not to give the kill order to the lasers.

  Then God started screaming.

  9

  The Belt

  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.

  ‘You’re such a fucking pussy,’ Mudge said. I couldn’t see him but somehow I could hear the grin he’d have on his face.

  ‘Shut up, Mudge. Morag, open the door.’ I think she was about to argue but it made sense. She only had one pistol, which freed up one of her hands. Cat and I covered her while Mudge pointed his assault rifle back up the stairway.

  It was the smell that got us first. People had died and died bad. The coppery tang of a lot of blood was almost overpowered by the burned-pork smell of cooked flesh from laser or black light fire. Then of course there was the smell of shit. People soil themselves when they are afraid or when they die, and bowels rupture when the lower abdomen is treated to sufficient trauma.

  I followed Cat through. The red emergency lighting coupled with the flickering light made it look like hell. The carpet of dead people helped give that impression as well. How had this happened so quickly? This was like smoothly executed genocide.

  ‘Them?’ Cat asked as she scanned the area. We were all thinking it. Just for a moment I wondered if everything we’d done had just been a Them psy-op, a precursor for an attack on the home system. I knew better, or I hoped I did.

  ‘Look at the wounds,’ I said. ‘That’s not from shards or black beam.’ Cat glanced down momentarily.

  ‘Tight grouping as well – good shooting,’ she said. She was right. A short burst to the body and then double tap to the head. Except for the ones that had been mutilated. Morag turned to one side and threw up. She was heaving, leaning on the rock wall next to the door.

  ‘Pull yourself together!’ I snapped. She glared at me. I hated saying it but we needed everyone working here. She straightened up, pistol at the ready. Thing is, she’d had the correct reaction. I should want to throw up. I shouldn’t be so used to this shit. Most o
f the corpses had been shot or just torn up. It was easy to see why Cat had thought it was Them. Some had had their genitals gouged out and their faces sawn off. I didn’t like that, not at all, and I didn’t want that to happen to me or anyone else here.

  ‘It’s a psyche job,’ Mudge whispered. I wasn’t sure but I thought that something had moved at the furthest range of my magnified optics. It was difficult to tell, my flash compensators were struggling with the flickering light. It was confusing my lowlight capability as well. ‘Fear of castration and loss of identity, it’s a standard and quick way of causing fear.’ Even Mudge was sounding grim.

  ‘Its certainly fucking playing with my calm,’ Cat growled.

  ‘Okay, we head back to the ship, keeping an eye out for Pagan,’ I said.

  We started moving, constantly scanning our surroundings. There were still people alive down here but they looked terrified and we didn’t stop to chat. We could hear whimpering and screaming from the wounded and nearly dead. This had been done in the time we’d spent in Trace’s office.

  I whipped my head to the right. Old instincts were telling me that something was moving in the shadows. I switched to thermographics, painting the area in multi-hued heat-haze patterns. It was difficult to pick out what was going on in the mass of hot pipes. Space was cold. Any habitat in space needed a lot of heating. If my imagination wasn’t playing tricks on me, then whoever or whatever it was must be able to shield their heat signature to a degree.

  We rounded a corner onto the main thoroughfare. Broken neon signs flickered and in one case provided an ongoing shower of sparks. More corpses.

  ‘Uh, Jake?’ Cat said. I looked over. Past her, against the station’s thick external rock wall, one of the security force’s light mechs lay in a heap on the ground. We moved over using it for cover.

  The mech had been torn apart. There was little evidence of heavy weapon fire. It looked like something had ripped parts off until it had got to the pilot. Around the mech were several dead guards. Again most of their wounds looked like they’d been inflicted in hand-to-hand by something with claws and possibly teeth. All over the walls I could see where rounds from the mech’s autocannon had impacted into the rock.