‘Do you know why you’re still alive?’ He shook his head. ‘Because even though you must have been terrified, you fought with the vagabond army. At some level, deep down you must have wanted things to get better.’
He just stared at me.
‘Try not to just react. Try to think about what I said. I’ll leave you with the flowers. They’re very pretty.’ Even if I say so myself. I walked through the wall.
Fiona didn’t get off nearly so lightly. I tracked her down to an expensive nightclub in Edinburgh. The bouncers didn’t want to let four scruffy bastards like us in. Well three – Merle scrubbed up nicely. Rannu and Mudge persuaded them. They didn’t hurt them too badly. One of the perks of hanging around with hard bastards (and overprotective males).
I’d analysed the imagery the evil cow had posted on the net and worked out who she was and where to find her. She was sitting with a group of her mates and some hired muscle. Rannu and Mudge took care of the muscle. Merle just sat down and ordered a drink. He said it was nothing to do with him.
Some little wanker called Alasdair tried to get involved. I scared him so badly I think he shat himself. I beat the shit out of her. Well you can take the girl out of Dundee …
So here we are on the side of a hill in the Highlands. It’s raining, it’s windy, it’s beautiful. We’re looking down on Loch Carron. Drinking whisky. Glenmorangie, Jakob’s drink. Each sip and it’s like I can taste him still.
Rannu’s here, the four furrows in his face still healing. Mudge is here, of course, smoking a spliff but reasonably straight and just about able to control his emotions. Merle is here, his arms wrapped in medgel casts. I don’t care how hard he likes to pretend to be, he’s here for Mudge. They’ll be going their separate ways after this though.
After here we’re going to Nepal. I want to meet Ashmi, Yangani and Sangar – find out why Rannu fought so hard. Also a place full of Ghurkha veterans is a reasonably safe place to live for a while. Mudge is going to come with us initially. He’s going to help. What we can do in the net he can do in the real world. Merle’s not coming. With what we’ve planned, Merle said he’s pretty sure that he’ll be paid to come and kill us. He was only half joking. He’ll probably refuse. To kill us, I mean.
It’ll be something like God but we’ll take more time, work it out better. Work the parameters better. Try and leave people with a bit more privacy. We’ve started building a network of hackers to gather information and networks of investigative types – journalists and other interested parties, to be managed by Mudge.
With a less total solution than God we might miss something. The hackers and investigators will pick up some of that, but hopefully we’ll be able to leave people with their dignity. They won’t be watched all the time. They can go and look at porn without everyone knowing.
We won’t be taking armed action against people; we’re just going to show people the truth to the best of our abilities. We will however defend ourselves in all sorts of interesting ways if they try to harm us.
See, we don’t care if you’ve got money and power. You want it. You work for it. We just want to live our lives. We care about abuse. People are more important. We are not a fucking resource. So if you take the piss you will be exposed. All we want is a level playing field, an equal chance. The bad people may have all the power, all the violence, all the guns, but we have the numbers. Or we will have. We’re kind of an oversight committee, free of government and corporate influence.
Will it be perfect? No. Will there be abuses, corruption? Probably. It’s a human institution after all, but we’ll do our best.
I hand the empty cup back to Mudge.
‘Another?’ he asks. I shake my head. He looks at me questioningly. I try not to think about the results of the test and not to touch my stomach. I’m convinced that I keep on doing it and must have given myself away. No fear? Yeah, right.
I stand up and take the ashes and unscrew the top. You have to be careful scattering ashes in a wind. We all get a taste of Jakob and end up coughing and spitting.
‘Sorry,’ I tell them. Mudge starts laughing first, then we all join in. Jakob’s copy is a cloud of dust for a while and then he’s gone.
Rannu hands me the trumpet. If I can learn to handle a Wraith on a submarine operation at depth with skillsofts, how difficult can a trumpet be? I put it to my lips and blow. It makes a horrible noise.
Acknowledgements
Once again thanks to:
Dr Hazel Spence Young and Scott Young for ongoing support.
I’d like to thank the members of the gaming community for all sorts of shenanigans in helping promote Veteran and being supportive. Too many to name so I’ll simply say thanks to the Lords of Barry, the Storm Brethren, the Guild, Slieve and the Charioteers. You know who you are.
Thank you to the Twitterati and Bloggers who have mentioned or reviewed the book, particularly: Mark Chitty at Walker of Worlds, Adam Whitehead at the Wertzone, Ove Jannson at Cybermage, James Long at Speculative Horizons and Amanda Rutter at Floor to Ceiling Books. An increasingly more important part of the genre-fan community that deserves more recognition.
To the web monkeys and artists who did a brilliant job on the website. That’s James Phillips, the mysterious Karma, Nicola Smith (who also has the good fortune to be my sister) and Ghoulia Peculiar.
Thank you to Dyanne and Tobias Heason and Tim DePhillip for a well-timed chilli and door-opening suggestions.
Also contributing artwork to the site as well as providing another stunning cover (all the other covers are jealous), Spyroteknik aka Martin Bland.
Thanks to fellow authors Stephen Deas and M.D. Lachlan for good company, advice and much needed sarcasm. To my knowledge Paul J. McAuley first coined the term Warewolf in his novel Fairyland. Paul very graciously allowed me to use the phrase in War in Heaven, so thanks to Paul as well.
Also thanks to Dan Abnett, Andy Remic, Adam Roberts and Stephen Baxter for taking the time to read and comment on Veteran.
Thanks again to the stubbled agent Sam Copeland at RCW Ltd.
To my editor Simon Spanton.
To Jon Weir, Gillian Redfearn and Charlie Panayiotou at Gollancz. To Hugh Davis for the copy-edit, I hope you get well paid for deciphering my English.
My family and friends for their support, enthusiasm and often patience, including my dad this time (could the League for the Protection of Fathers please stop sending me hate mail, it was a joke).
Finally I’d like to say thank you to everyone who read Veteran and took the time to post comments and reviews on the net, good or bad, and to all the people in bookshops who helped push the book. All efforts are much appreciated.
Gavin G. Smith, Leicester, 2011.
www.gavingsmith.com
Also by Gavin G. Smith from Gollancz:
Veteran
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Gavin G. Smith 2011
All rights reserved
The right of Gavin G. Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published 2011 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 575 09473 4
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this c
ondition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.gavingsmith.com
www.orionbooks.co.uk
War in Heaven Page 67
