War in Heaven

by Gavin G. Smith

  Cat climbed to her feet with some difficulty due to the railgun harness. She turned to face the man.

  ‘Merle?’ I couldn’t remember Cat ever sounding that unsure.

  He looked back at her. His implants were certainly emotive. I wasn’t sure how that worked. I was sure I saw hate in his eyes.

  ‘A fucking cop!’ he spat.

  ‘Corporate secur—’ she managed to get out before he attacked her.

  He attacked someone with a railgun with only a metal shank. I thought Cat was pretty good about it. After all the shit we’d been through I would have been tempted to just blow him away. I was quite tempted to do that anyway. He drove her to the ground and she was just managing to hold him off. It seemed that her obviously superior strength was not necessarily a match for insane conviction. The shank was getting closer and closer to her. I bet she wished she’d put armour on before going to Trace’s office now.

  I shook my head. We really didn’t have time for this sibling rivalry bullshit. Pagan was covering our back. I put as much power as I could muster into the kick I delivered. It snapped Merle’s head around to one side and he spat blood all over Cat. His head was lolling around but he was still conscious, so I stamped on it. He collapsed onto her.

  ‘You’re not one of us yet,’ I told the unconscious body. Pagan backed up closer to me.

  ‘So we’ve collected another arsehole then?’ he asked.

  Just once, I thought, it’d be nice if we could sort things out without violence.

  ‘Ungrateful bastard,’ I muttered, meaning Merle. We’d have to carry him now as well.

  ‘Could somebody get my naked brother off me?’ Cat asked.

  10

  En Route to Lalande

  This was weird. Apparently they used to have houses just for tea. This wasn’t like the sort of brew-up I was used to, either in a foxhole or on the bonnet of a Land Rover with your mates on watch. It was taking a fuck of a lot longer for a start. But then we weren’t expecting to be torn apart by Them at any given moment. While we may have had a boiled sweet before a cuppa, we didn’t have fancy sweets to ‘prepare our palates’ either.

  I’d like to have dismissed this all as bollocks but the programming was superb. It was the detail. The sweets tasted like sweets and good sweets. How had they coded that? I could smell the blossoms on the air, which was fresh and clean and maybe a little thin, like we were actually on a mountain in the virtual environment. We could smell the tea as it was being prepared. I could feel the rough texture of the straw mats through the silk of the dressing-gown thing I was wearing. I think it was called a kimono, and while I’d protested at having to wear it, even virtually, I don’t think I’d ever felt silk before. You had to look hard to see the edges of this fantasy.

  A lot of time, effort and probably money had gone into this program. It made sense, I guess. Michihisa Nuiko was a chimera. She had been born severely disabled, but luckily for her chimerical technology and her own inherent piloting ability meant that she could still join the war effort. It must have been nice for her to be part of such an inclusive society. Everyone gets used.

  She wasn’t talking about her war record much. In fact beyond being the single most polite person I’ve ever met, sort of an anti-Mudge, she wasn’t saying much of anything. Judging by the craft that the Yakuza set her up with, her record must have been pretty good, and judging by the type of job she was recommended for and was prepared to take, her career must have been on the sharp end. Itaki had put us on to her. Despite his trigger-happy people and the weird thing with having everyone cut to look like him, he’d proved to be an okay guy for a mobster and a pimp.

  Pagan had been excited that the Yakuza had the vice franchise in Camp 12 because he had worked with them before. While most organised crime operations had to live up to their word to a degree, otherwise nobody would ever deal with them, Pagan was of the opinion that the Yakuza were the least likely to sell us out. As long as they were properly paid that is.

  Nuiko lived in a womb-like life-support cocoon in an armoured compartment in the centre of the ship. We would never see that. All our interaction was through the beautifully crafted sense programs in her personalised net realm. Like the tea room made of lacquered wood and paper looking out over a dramatic snow-capped mountain vista.

  Her ship was called Tetsuo Chou, which Pagan told me meant ‘steel butterfly’. It was a small, heavily modified system clipper, which are pretty much the fastest ships available outside the military. Nuiko’s backers had paid for an induction sail to be added for FTL travel. The streamlined, distended-teardrop shape was covered in green/black energy-dissipating acoustic tiles to lower its energy signature. The ship had top-of-the-line navigation systems to minimise the use of manoeuvring engines, which in turn would further lower its energy signature. Internal power was kept to a bare minimum as well, which meant a cold ship. Its electronic countermeasures system was also state of the art, making it very stealthy. Which was just what we needed, and virtual Nuiko hadn’t batted a virtual eyelid when we mentioned an OILO entry. I think she’d done orbital insertion before.

  BPIC decided not to slave us in the end. Partly because Itaki vouched for us, partly because we were fully armed by the time they regained control of Freetown 12, but mainly because they had their own problems. Itaki’s people had convinced enough ships’ captains to let the part of God that lived in their systems join the fight against Demiurge and Demiurge had finally been destroyed.

  There had only been the eight Vucari and one had been destroyed by automated security systems while sabotaging the fusion plant. They’d come in on a long-range strike craft, the same one they’d left on when they returned to Sirius on a similar job to ours, I guessed. The LRSC had come back radically different, however.

  When we finally managed to break into the craft we found that the living space had been radically reduced. It was a rats’ nest where the Vucari must have been crammed together. The rest of the ship was full of a honeycomb-like substance that looked very similar to Them biotech. This was where the empowered Demiurge had been stored and was the increased memory and processing power that had given God so much trouble.

  We found Bataar, the Vucari hacker. He seemed to have merged with the biotech material. It filled his mouth, his nostrils, his plugs and penetrated his ears. Much of his body was buried deep in it. If there were pilots in there I guessed something similar had happened to them.

  At the same time as Freetown 12 was hit all the other Freetown Camps and the asteroid cities suffered similar attacks. All from returning special forces groups sent to disrupt and gather information in Black-Squadron-held territory. All of them supported by Demiurge.

  Some of the other Freetown Camps hadn’t been as lucky as 12. Over a dozen of them had been ‘sanitised’, as BPIC put it. As had Hygeia. I don’t know why God hadn’t been able to stop Demiurge in a city that size – perhaps Rolleston had sent larger ships with more space for Demiurge – but more than two hundred thousand people had died in the subsequent plasma bombardment from BPIC and system patrol ships. Two hundred thousand. It was just a number. A number heated by liquid fire that will burn in space and then cool in vacuum. I didn’t see the ballet of all those bodies blown into the cold night. The figure was so abstract I struggled to feel the anger I should have.

  While the Black Squadrons had earned themselves another enemy in BPIC, they had managed to cripple the logistical support of the mining operations in the Belt. In doing so they had of course denied those resources to Earth. What we couldn’t work out was why had all those people turned. Why had the Vucari gone over to Rolleston? The most obvious explanation was that they had been slaved. If so it was a new and more sophisticated form of slaving because they’d had no slave jacks in their plugs and they didn’t seem to suffer the drop-off in performance than comes with slaveware.

  Once the ritual part of the tea ceremony was over and we could converse normally Mudge had suggested brainwashing. Then he’d explained t
he concept. It was basically a form of psychological coercion to do what you’re told. We called it basic training in the army. Pagan had suggested that it was never as total or as effective as it had seemed on the Vucari.

  ‘Possession?’ I asked as Nuiko ladled tea from an iron pot set in a hole in the ground. Even serving the tea seemed complex. Nuiko was small, slender, pale, and wearing a simple dark kimono. Her features were a composed expressionless mask. I found this faintly disconcerting. I also didn’t like that she never met my eyes, particularly as I was wearing my Sunday-best icon, which Morag had made for me. The one where I had my natural eyes, or what Morag thought they should look like.

  ‘And this from someone with no faith,’ Pagan scoffed. He was in his Druidical icon, except that he too wore a kimono like the rest of us. The kimonos were a piece of code gifted to us by Nuiko. It was code that had been thoroughly vetted by Morag and Pagan before it got anywhere near us.

  ‘It happens,’ Morag said. Presumably irritated at having to back me up. She too wore a kimono and I was relieved that she was wearing her Maiden of Flowers icon out of respect for our host rather than the Black Annis. I didn’t like the Black Annis icon and I didn’t want to meet it while Morag was still so angry at me. That said, I hadn’t forgotten that Morag could kill me in here. I was only slightly worried that the tea might contain a piece of biofeedback poison code. Still it tasted nice when we finally were allowed to taste it and had been quiet long enough for our conversation to be proper.

  ‘So I’ve heard,’ Pagan said, smiling patronisingly. ‘To anybody you’ve known?’

  ‘Well no,’ Morag said, suddenly unsure of herself.

  ‘It’s a myth,’ Mudge said. His icon looked like himself without augmentation. I think it was more of Morag’s work. He’d only been allowed into the tea room sanctum after he’d promised Pagan that he’d behave.

  ‘Like the spirits in the net?’ I asked, bowing slightly to Nuiko, like Pagan had taught us, as she poured me some more tea. Pagan started to answer. ‘I’ve seen an exorcism,’ I said, forestalling his reply.

  ‘Bullshit,’ Mudge said and then studiously ignored Pagan’s glare of disapproval.

  ‘In Fintry, Vicar did it.’

  ‘Very convincing theatre, I’ve no doubt,’ Pagan said. For someone who wanted us to behave in here he seemed to be desperate to get slapped.

  ‘Maybe, but the guy was a howling lunatic, and according to friends and kin he was acting differently and knew stuff he shouldn’t. Vicar plugged himself into the guy. There was lots of screaming for someone who was supposed to be trancing, some thrashing around, a biofeedback kicking that Vicar swears hadn’t been inflicted by him, and then the guy was better,’ I finished.

  ‘There could be any number of—’ Pagan started.

  ‘Is it just the idea of this Demiurge possessing people that scares you badly?’ Merle asked. His voice was a deep rich baritone. It was also cold and emotionless.

  I wasn’t sure I liked this guy. All he’d done since we’d come on board was eat the high-calorie combat rations we’d brought with us and exercise. Mudge had asked him how he’d managed to retain any degree of fitness while locked in the hole. Isometrics, Merle had told him. He did not have much time to get combat-ready after his imprisonment. Whatever we could say about him, he certainly seemed driven.

  I wasn’t sure if Cat and him had sorted out their differences but I had come across them having a private conversation jacked into each other. Merle, like Cat, was wearing an off-the-shelf icon. The kimonos hung shapelessly off both of them.

  ‘No, I don’t like the idea, do you?’ Pagan asked, somewhat testily.

  ‘I don’t like any of this—’ Merle began.

  ‘Prefer to be in your hole?’ Mudge asked.

  ‘But I think we need to face up to what that means in terms of security,’ he said, glancing over at Nuiko. It was her house. We were in FTL; there was no one for her or God, who was in the Tetsuo Chou’s systems, to tell out here. I’d agreed with Pagan’s call on that. Also it wasn’t as if she knew what we were going to be doing on the ground because we didn’t know ourselves. ‘It means that if any of us are taken we’re completely compromised and quickly.’

  ‘So we don’t get taken alive?’ Mudge said. He was smiling. I think going out in flash of glory was beginning to appeal to him.

  ‘You ready to kill any of us who gets captured?’ Merle asked.

  ‘Okay, you’ve proved how hard core you are. Let’s change the subject,’ I said, even though I knew he had a point.

  ‘Problem won’t go away,’ Merle said.

  ‘He’s right,’ Cat agreed. Though, like Morag agreeing with me, I think this cost her some.

  ‘I am prepared to kill any of us who gets captured,’ I said, ‘because I’ve seen the alternative. The people we killed used to be friends of mine.’ Except I knew I could never pull the trigger on Morag. I reflected that she had no such qualms, which was good. I didn’t want to find myself chewing down on a pile of corpses wearing someone else’s face. It didn’t seem dignified or hygienic.

  ‘How’d you get out of that hole anyway?’ Mudge asked. He was taking a lot of interest in our latest addition.

  ‘When the warewolf opened up the oubliette I just ran between its legs,’ Merle answered.

  ‘Simple as that?’ I asked.

  ‘Every second I’d been in that hole was preparation for that moment,’ he answered.

  The problem was that we hadn’t had the chance to hang around and find out what was going on with the Vucari, why they’d done what they’d done. We’d had God relay the information of what we’d seen back to Earth, but that was the best we could do. Then we’d left on the Tetsuo Chou as quickly as we could, though if this was the opening move in the attack on Earth then for all we knew we could be passing Lalande’s colonial fleet in the night at FTL.

  Merle was right, I had to admit. Everyone talks eventually, and eventually would become quickly if they used sense interrogation techniques because they could distend time. Even then we still had time. If Demiurge or whatever could actually possess then we had no time. If someone was taken that meant total compromise. That meant nobody went home, we just ran. So we needed to make sure that nobody got captured. That meant a suicide solution, which included a kill switch for a firestorm program in our internal electronic memories. More importantly it meant that we needed to be prepared to kill each other if we saw someone going down and we had the opportunity. Fighting Them was hard but less complicated. I missed Their simplicity.

  Security-wise things had relaxed a little because we were self-contained. We would be keeping God out of planning as much as possible, but even he would have nobody to tell as he would not try and communicate with any Demiurge-infected system. Nuiko we would tell what she needed to know for her part of the job. Beyond that we would keep her in the dark as well. As much for her own good as ours. Talking to Pagan, though, I got the feeling that she would fly the Tetsuo Chou into the heart of a sun before she would allow herself to be compromised by the Black Squadrons.

  My problem with Nuiko was that she was new and I didn’t understand her. Merle I didn’t trust but I had a frame of reference for him. Despite his behaviour he wasn’t a million miles removed from us. But Nuiko’s reserve was about a hundred times more extreme than your average English person’s. She was very private and apparently very respectful of our privacy, even though we were quite literally guests in her world. A lot of her behaviour seemed very ritualistic – the past, if it was even a real past, seemed important to her. To me she seemed to be fighting to keep something alive. Something I didn’t understand. I guess that her being a chimera didn’t aid my understanding. To all intents and purposes I was trying to relate to a machine, but she just seemed so … alien.

  And then she withdrew. Pagan watched her and I watched Pagan as she took small steps to a sliding wood-and-paper panel and slid it shut behind her. This symbolised her leaving the closed system. In the real wo
rld we were all sitting cross-legged on crates facing each other, plugged into a memory cube. The jack that connected Nuiko was mounted on a cable snake, which would have disengaged from the memory cube and would be snaking its way back towards the armoured cocoon that protected our pilot. The memory cube held a downloaded copy of the tea house environment. Another gift from Nuiko. All these gifts made me nervous, but I wasn’t looking after the information security aspect of the operation.

  Pagan and Morag started rechecking the security. Glyphs of light appeared in front of them, throwing shadows over their respective icons’ features. I took the opportunity to stand up and pace over to the wooden veranda. It looked out onto an ornamental garden of stone and water features. Past the garden was the stunning mountain vista. The tea house was part of some kind of castle complex built high into the side of a mountain. The fact that I could enjoy the mountain air, seemingly feel it cold and thin in my lungs, was sublime.

  The holographic display hovering over the low lacquered wooden table took me out of the illusion and reminded me where I was and what I was doing.

  ‘This secure?’ Merle asked.

  ‘As anything is any more,’ Pagan told him. ‘Are you in or not?’

  ‘I’m not happy to be here, but it’s an improvement. Besides –’ he looked at Cat ‘– my sister has provided me with some very compelling reasons to help. Not least of which is a fuckload of money.’

  ‘Just so you know we’re probably not coming back,’ Pagan told him. ‘And don’t swear.’ I glanced over at him before turning back to Merle.

  ‘Want to share those compelling reasons?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Merle told me flatly. ‘Besides, I know the lie of the land. Things go to shit, I reckon I can disappear.’

  ‘I told you, don’t swear,’ Pagan said. I don’t think he liked Merle but there was something else here as well.

  ‘Fuck, Pagan, she’s not even in the fucking room,’ Mudge said, smiling.

  ‘I know. It’s just—’