The inhuman screaming stopped and all the things that had been growing out of the wall fell. It was quiet. This was respite, but it still left us with the Black Squadron things, the Grey Lady and Rolleston, who must be pretty angry now. Who must be through toying with us.
Morag came to and sat up. She looked at Pagan’s charred corpse. Then she looked at my blood-covered and scorched form.
Merle was trying to crawl out from underneath the corpse of his transformed sister.
‘I’m not being funny, Merle, but if you’re capable of holding a gun do you think you could help?’ I asked him.
He just muttered something and then screamed as he pulled the blades out of his flesh. He retrieved his plasma rifle and got ready. He was bleeding badly. We all were.
The fleet battle was almost over. Just the badly damaged Thunderchilde and a few others held out. There was debris everywhere.
In the net the fight was going a little better as the vagabond army surrounded the few remaining angels. They didn’t know they were killing children. Above them the sky looked like a rough sea of fire and the four black suns still burned in the sky, columns of black fire still raining down on the plain of black glass.
‘Do you like my Seraphim? They are born into the net and think it is the real world. They truly do believe they are my terrible angels.’
I had no idea where he had come from. He just appeared in the room. I think he might have wanted to spout some snappy villainous monologue. Fuck that. We knew it was pointless but we shot him. A lot. It was cathartic.
Rannu was thrown back from the doorway he was guarding. He shouted. The side of his head steamed red as he staggered and fired a long and surprisingly undisciplined burst down the corridor one-handed. He was still staggering back as he fired his grenade launcher. There was an explosion in the corridor. Then a grenade hit the ground by Rannu and exploded. A concussion grenade, it still had enough force to blow him into the air. The Grey Lady jumped through the explosion.
Mudge, Morag, Merle and I concentrated fire on Rolleston. I ran out of ammo and ditched the SAW. I was aware of something happening in the net but I wasn’t sure what. I grabbed my Mastodon and TO-7 from their smartgrip holsters and with my shoulder laser continued firing uselessly at Rolleston.
He walked through the fire and made for Merle, who fired round after round into him from his plasma rifle, surrounding him in flames. Merle dropped the plasma weapon because he didn’t want Rolleston surrounded in burning plasma when he reached him, then drew his Void Eagle. In very rapid succession he fired all the rounds in its magazine pointlessly into Rolleston. His flesh was reforming and healing the inflicted wounds. Rolleston closed with Merle and we had to stop shooting at him. I holstered both my pistols and sprinted towards Rolleston.
I only saw it because I was looking for it. Both of the obsidian-bladed punch daggers appeared in Merle’s hands. The daggers were filled with Crom Dhu, the derivate of Crom designed to seek out and kill the other bio-nanites. It had been designed to exterminate Them if the war had ever got beyond the Cabal’s control.
Without the co-operation and resources of the Cabal, Crom Dhu had proved costly and difficult to replicate. Most of what the Earth forces had manufactured was stored in bunkers on Earth ready to fight the terraforming attempts of Crom Cruach. Rannu, Merle and I each had some. Merle’s was in his punch daggers; Rannu’s and mine were both in skull fuckers, daggers designed for piercing the hard bone of skulls. The virus was in the pommels, designed to be released when the blades felt flesh. Not unlike the dagger that Rolleston had used to infect Gregor. I drew mine from the small of my back as I ran towards Rolleston.
Unable to get a clear shot, Morag charged the Grey Lady, who was fighting Rannu. He had his skull fucker in his hand as he tried to dodge and block the Grey Lady’s incredibly fast flurry of kicks and hand strikes. She was beating the shit out of him.
Morag launched herself into the air in a perfect flying kick aimed at the Grey Lady, who side-kicked her in mid-air. I heard the crack of bone powdering as foot contacted face. It was a sickening sound. Morag’s head whipped back and she flew past the pair of them and landed in a heap.
The Grey Lady spun round on one leg and kneed Rannu in the side of the head with the upraised leg. It was so fast even Rannu hadn’t been able to do anything about it. She kneed him so hard that his knees gave out and he stumbled to the ground.
Merle stabbed out at Rolleston with speed I could only envy. Rolleston reached forward and grabbed one arm, but that had been a feint for the blade in Merle’s other hand, which was heading straight at Rolleston’s face. He caught that arm as well. I saw a look of panic on Merle’s face, and then Rolleston just broke both his arms, snapping the bones with such force that they broke through flesh and subcutaneous armour. I saw the bulges under Merle’s inertial armour as it turned dark and wet with blood. Merle started screaming. Understandably.
Rolleston turned to me as I reached him and swung at him with the blade. He grabbed my arm and then used my own momentum to help propel me into the wall. I bounced off the dead mutated Berserks that had been growing there and hit the ground disoriented.
I shook my head. I was vaguely aware of things happening on the net. No time. The knife, the knife? Rolleston was holding it. He knew. Hell, it had been his idea.
Morag and Rannu had both staggered to their feet and were attacking Josephine Bran. She was having no problem blocking or dodging both their attacks. When one of them gave her an opening she would close and hit them with low kicks, elbows and strikes at joint or nerves. Almost every touch made them cry out in pain. When she attacked she would manoeuvre so her intended victim got in the way of the other one’s attack. More than once Morag punched or kicked Rannu.
Rolleston tossed away the knife. Mudge started shooting him pointlessly in the back. Staring at Rolleston, everything he’d done, everything he’d caused to happen, came flooding back to me. From Sirius onwards, I could see the faces of all the members of the Wild Boys, SAS, SBS, other special forces, military intelligence and conventional soldiers whose deaths he’d been responsible for. All my friends that I’d watched die. I saw all of the pain he’d caused. In a moment of clarity, a moment of perfect cold anger, I knew that I was going to kill him.
Now I saw what was happening on the net. The plain of glass was obscured in mist. The beatific and horrific walked in the mist as shadows. They were like giants among the vagabond army, seeking out those who had been loyal, those who had worshipped them, and gifting them with the godsware. They were the history of humanity as religious iconography given form on the net. Like their namesakes they did not fight alongside humanity; they played their own games, but today they rewarded their followers with technology, uplifting them. Morag’s threat/summons had been heard.
I smiled. All eight blades extended from my knuckles. Rolleston slowly turned to Mudge. He could take his time as Mudge was no threat. One of Rolleston’s arms was transforming into a plasma weapon as he readied himself to kill another one of my friends. Mudge was still lying where he had fallen, firing burst after burst.
I ran at Rolleston’s back and jumped on it, swinging at him like a wild thing with the claws. With a strength I did not know I had, I pushed the blades through his hardening flesh again and again, just hacking at him. Black ichor, like Them, an entire alien race of his victims, spurted out over me. It was a religious experience. A very base one, as I became a vessel of rage moving faster and hitting harder than I ever had before. I was a wild animal enhanced by cybernetics and alien creatures in my blood and pure fucking rage. Rolleston was surprised by the ferocity of my attack. I would’ve been surprised by the ferocity of the attack if my total hatred for this man had not just coalesced into a perfect rage that left no room for thought in my head.
His head came away in my hand. His body dropped to the ground. I was covered from head to foot in blood and ichor. Winded, almost unable to breathe. I had become something else. I wondered about the Th
emtech in my body. Had I just been a vessel for revenge or self-defence, sent by another race?
The decapitation of Rolleston must have distracted the Grey Lady for a moment as Morag caught her squarely on the side of the head with a punch. She kicked out at Morag hard enough to break ribs. Rannu feinted with his left. Bran easily blocked it. Rannu’s right hand was a blur, then he stepped back. The dagger with Crom Dhu in it was sticking out of Bran’s shoulder. She turned slowly to look at it. The dagger would be pumping Crom Dhu into her system, killing all the Themtech bio-nanites that had given her the edge over all us mere humans for all those years.
In the net the vagabond army had taken to the air, trailing their silver cords behind them. They were among the net representations of the ships of the enemy fleet.
The head in my hand started laughing. I looked down at it in horror.
‘What were you hoping to accomplish?’ Rolleston’s severed head asked me.
I dropped it and backed away. His body stood up and reached for its head. Already black veins were growing from the stump of his neck and the bottom of his head. They met as he placed his head back on his neck and I watched as they knitted together.
The Grey Lady picked the knife out of her shoulder and threw it away. It was empty and useless now. Morag was clutching her chest and shaking her head despondently. Black scalpel-like blades shot out of Bran’s fingers, and she moved too quickly for Rannu. She raked the blades down his face, tearing them through his subcutaneous armour and making four deep bloody rents in his face. He stumbled back, sitting down hard.
‘Are we finished now?’ Rolleston asked. He was starting to sound angry. ‘Have we done our little dance?’
I glanced over at the knife he’d taken from me and tossed aside.
‘Probably not,’ I ventured, but if the knife hadn’t worked on Bran then this one wouldn’t work on Rolleston. He followed my eyes to where it lay.
‘Do you not understand what you’re fighting against?’ he asked.
‘Well, I’ve always known you were a wanker.’
I heard Mudge laugh. A lit fag had appeared in his mouth.
‘You know this fight would’ve been over a long time ago if you two hadn’t poisoned your flesh,’ Rannu said bitterly. I could tell by his body language that he was ready to start fighting again. Mudge was about to back-shoot Bran, and Morag was preparing to attack Bran as well.
I spent a long time looking at Morag. She looked back at me. She didn’t smile. She nodded. It was enough. I turned back to Rolleston. I briefly wondered why he was naked. Maybe there were just no clothes fine enough for a new god.
‘Shall we get this over and done with?’ I asked.
‘It is,’ he said. Black Squadron mutants came running into the vast biomechanical chamber to point their weapons limbs at us.
‘Bollocks,’ was the best I managed to come up with.
‘This was a game, a diversion for us, nothing more. You were controlled at every step of the way,’ Rolleston told me.
‘Bollocks,’ I said again, with some feeling. ‘I think we gave you a bit of a fright.’
He gave this some thought.
‘A few surprises but what have you accomplished? You’ve removed Demiurge from the Bush’s isolated system at the cost of one of your own. I’ll just open it up to Demiurge out there. You made the little gods come. Good. They’re in one place – makes it easier for us to deal with them – and thanks to you we now have an idea of where they come from. Your god is gone. I rule the net. Your fleet is almost destroyed and Earth will finally grow to its manifest and true form.’
‘If I ask really nicely will you kill us now?’ Mudge said. Rolleston glanced over at him. The Grey Lady was coming to his side.
‘I’m not going to kill you, Howard. We didn’t go to all this trouble for that.’
‘Fuck you,’ I said quietly.
‘Don’t worry. We’re not even going to possess you. Well perhaps Mr Nagarkoti just long enough for him to rape his family.’
Rannu flinched. He looked terrified.
‘No, you’re such throwbacks that you will be the only witnesses to the world transcendent. Of course you will be in different forms. We are going to experiment with nerve endings and agony in entertaining new shapes. You’ll become musical instruments, curiosities.’
‘You know, all the other Wild Boys used to hate you because they thought you were a ruthless bastard. Then you get into all this and everyone’s scared of you because you’re such a thoroughgoing loon. I never hated you. I just don’t like you because you’re so fucking boring,’ Mudge told him and ground out his cigarette. Then he started crawling towards Merle, who was lying on the floor, his face a mask of agony as he tried to cope with the pain. Mudge ignored the Black Squadron things. What was the worst they could do to him?
I saw the anger on Rolleston’s face. He really couldn’t understand why such lowly beings as us – scum really, squaddies, petty criminals, failed not-so-petty criminals, journalists and ex-hookers – wouldn’t bow and scrape to his divine majesty. He really had bought into this god thing. The amount of power he wielded aside, it really was pathetic. He had us. We were dead or worse. We would end up as playthings for his twisted fantasies, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling we’d won, or rather that he couldn’t touch us. On the other hand I suspected that wouldn’t be much comfort to me in my future of torture, but the human mind could only take so much. I’d end up mad, insensate and probably comatose. So something to look forward to then.
‘If you’re doing the supervillain bit, have I got time for a drink?’ Mudge asked.
‘Look, you’re going to do really bad things to us – we get it. All things considered, we’re a bit fatigued by looking at the all the squirrel shit in your head that you’ve forced out into the real world,’ I said. ‘Really, we’ve got nothing to talk about, us and you.’
He nodded as if he understood. Then his fingers became claws and he rammed them into my chest cavity. I dribbled blood. It really fucking hurt but I didn’t scream. Rannu flinched. Mudge actually gave a shout of surprise. Morag cried out, her hand shooting to her mouth. Merle had his own stuff to worry about.
I could feel his fingers inside me. That’s okay. Internal organs don’t have nerve endings. I spat out some more blood. My love/hate relationship with the medical diagnostic warning icons on my IVD continued as they told me I’d be dead soon.
‘Major,’ Josephine said, putting a hand on Rolleston’s arm. He looked down at her. She was staring at me.
Something itched at the back of my head, some instinct telling me to concentrate on the net. Odd time I know, but I checked the net feed. Silver fire flowed from weapons, limbs, mouths and other things into the net representations of the ships in Rolleston’s fleet. The silver fire, given to the vagabond army of hackers by the gods in the net, sought out the possessed. It was the same godsware program that had freed Rannu. Many of the possessed would die. They weren’t in as good a physical condition and didn’t have Rannu’s strength of mind. I looked at Rolleston and smiled. He was getting angrier and angrier. He would feel the mass exorcisms – as pain, I hoped.
His feelings at what was happening boiled out onto his malleable flesh, his features warping, flowing and changing, I suspected beyond his control. As I watched his face become part demon and part insect, I realised. This wasn’t just hatred aimed at us, this was fear and self-loathing given fantasy and then form. He hadn’t considered himself human, ever, and hated himself. If he hadn’t had his fingers in my chest I would have pitied him.
I saw Pagan walking across the plain of black glass under a sea of fire towards four black suns. Lightning played all around him as his staff tapped against the glass.
I turned to look at Morag. She was horrified by what was happening to me. I wanted to tell her it would be okay. Maybe I did. I turned back to Rolleston and laughed at him.
‘Father?’ Josephine said with some urgency now, still holding on to his arm.
<
br /> ‘Look what you’ve done to yourself,’ I said to him and then closed my eyes. I didn’t want his face to be the last thing I saw. I thought of Morag. Rolleston clenched his fist.
26
Morag
I watched my lover die. No. I watched Jakob die. I watched Rolleston tear the heart out of the only man I’d ever loved and crush it. No. Ambassador was gone, so frightened, so lost, so far away from everything he had ever known. We’d used Ambassador as a tool, because of his ability to process vast amounts of information. We were no different to Rolleston and his abuse of Themtech. There was no Themtech, only Them, another race. Ambassador became a weapon, a bridge, part of Pagan to act as a conduit to bring God into the isolated system, to destroy Demiurge and isolate Rolleston. Ambassador had gone, part of me was missing, and Pagan and God were one.
Ambassador was gone and so was Jakob. Both my lovers were dead. I wanted to cut my glass eyes out so I could cry again. I watched Jakob slump forward against Rolleston, this monster, this spoilt child who had done all this, created all this madness.
I watched Josephine Bran back away from her father, looking between him and Jakob’s corpse. You poor woman. How long? I wondered. All the time you served with him on Sirius? Of course you could never say or do anything: you were the Grey Lady. More to the point, Rolleston’s shadow eclipsed you. Bran sat down hard on the floor. Emotion looked foreign on her features. Rolleston turned to her, frowning.
Merle was sitting up watching, his pain under control but helpless without arms. Mudge was sobbing. He could never know. He’d probably kill me. In his own way he had loved Jakob. He wasn’t interested in him in that way but their bonds had run deep. Rannu was frightened. He had every reason to be. He knew from bitter experience that Rolleston lived up to his threats.
Jakob, you fool. He’d made a lot of mistakes. In many ways he was a weak man. He’d done and said a lot of stupid and hurtful things. He kept on trying to do what he thought was best for other people. Not knowing enough to ask them first, to talk to them. But he’d helped me help myself and he never knew when to stop fighting. He tried to be a good friend and he had tried to be as good a man as he knew how. It was enough. I think he was the first person to care for me since my sister died.
War in Heaven Page 65
