by Gavin Smith
‘So Crom’s on the Vindictive?’ Gregor asked.
‘I believe that is the case,’ God said. I did not like how vague that sounded.
‘Why just Sirius?’ I asked. Surprisingly it was Gregor who answered.
‘That was the plan. Crom was less evolved than Demiurge - it was little more than a side project really - and Sirius is the greatest concentration of Them.’
‘What’s the worst-case scenario here?’ I said, sounding hollow and pointless even to myself.
‘What do you think?’ Gregor snapped uncharacteristically. ‘They take control of all four colonial fleets and Them forces in the Sirius system and then come back here.’
‘The worst-case scenario is more war,’ Rannu said quietly.
‘Between humans,’ Pagan said. He sounded broken. How had it gone wrong so quickly?
30
The Sirius System
It was pity. That was the conclusion I came to as another fit of coughing racked my body and I coughed and spat up blood, nausea rolling over me in waves. Morag lay next me on the bunk, holding me and trying to avoid getting blood on her. I didn’t have very much longer to go. I felt like all my flesh had rotted off and I only existed as drugs and a machine now. They hadn’t wanted me going with them, but I knew I’d last that long and Mudge, the alchemist, had assured me he had just the right cocktail of chemicals to see me through. On the way back I was going into an automed. They intended to place me in chemical stasis to slow the progression of the radiation sickness. It wasn’t so I could see the Earth again. I had little false sentimentality for that shit hole. I just wanted to make sure that Messer and the Wait didn’t live too much longer than I did. In fact, if they didn’t live as long as me that would be better.
Morag was looking after me on the trip out. Like I said, pity. I think revulsion at the pathetic nature of my current physical state, along with memories of me being an arsehole in the ruins of Trenton, had washed away any attraction she may have felt for me. Mudge would come in every so often, take the piss out of me and give me drink, fags and drugs that my system didn’t cope with very well. I couldn’t deal with the others. They weren’t as good at keeping the pity out of their eyes as Mudge and Morag. Not that I saw Gregor though; he was in a fucking cocoon.
The thing was, I’d take pity. I needed her. Pretty selfish thing to do, I guess, especially after what I’d said to her, but I couldn’t handle it on my own. If I’d been on my own and hadn’t had this thing to do I would’ve put the Tyler to my head long ago. Besides, I couldn’t really see Mudge doing such a good job of looking after me.
The butcher bill wasn’t nearly as bad as it could’ve been. I’d seen Balor’s wound: the plasma had eaten through his armour plate and cooked a lot of his systems. He’d actually blacked out, which he was furious with himself about. As far as I knew he was one of a very select few who’d ever survived multiple direct hits from a plasma weapon. It should’ve burnt straight through him. I guess he was very well engineered. Still, he’d seemed a bit more subdued since Rolleston had put him down and he’d been sucked out of the Spoke. It was good for peace and quiet but bad for morale. Not that we really had any. I don’t think Balor liked it now he wasn’t top of the food chain.
Rannu had had most of his face blown off. The Spectre had cracked the armour on his skull, killed a lot of brain cells, but he’d recover. The medpak that covered most of his face was slowly rebuilding it. He was lucky. We all were. Well, except Buck.
Gregor had healed himself. Just after the fight on Atlantis I’d seen him. There was still an angry wound in his head made by Rolleston’s skull fucker that the Themtech was trying to heal. He was fine once that had happened.
Pagan had only taken a few rounds from Rolleston’s Spectre and was pretty much fine but terrified, like the rest of us. Except Gregor, I think Gregor was just angry.
Gibby had only been saved because he had upgraded the armour implanted on his skull to provide better protection against impact from crashing. Josephine’s kick had split his armoured skull but he’d live. Other than that, he was missing lumps of flesh from the laser wounds on his chest. He’d heal, physically anyway. We were all used to losing people in combat, but Buck and Gibby had been together since they were kids growing up in Austin. Gibby told me that they’d done everything together. Raced the same cars and bikes, got in the same fights, worked together, lost their virginity together, which I had to admit was a little odd, and signed up together. Gibby said he felt like half of him was dead. Although I hadn’t grown up with Gregor, I had felt similarly when his loss finally sank in after Dog 4. We’d managed to get him back though, but after what I’d seen him do in the Spoke he just scared me.
Like Gibby, Mudge had lost some weight courtesy of it being superheated and blown off by the Grey Lady. He’d also needed a new leg, but other than that he’d got off lightly. Mudge was tough and his enhancements were pretty good. He came close to holding his own but at the end of the day he wasn’t built like us. That and his stupid decision not to wear armour over his string vest had led to him going down so quickly.
Morag was a mess. She had been blind, deaf and suffering from hypoxia. They treated the hypoxia. They replaced her eyes and ears. Tried to make them look as natural as possible, not like our black lenses. Augmented them so her eyes and ears had capabilities similar to ours. Better than the real ones, but every time I looked at the angry scars I thought how another bit of her humanity had been cut away, how with each surgery she became a little bit more like me. What the fuck were we thinking letting her come along?
They rebuilt my internal organs, put me back together, sewed flesh and replaced broken components. They couldn’t see the point and neither could I, as I was still dying of radiation poisoning. They tried to keep me from going. There was talk of making my final days as comfortable as possible in the medical facilities of Atlantis. And miss committing suicide in the Sirius system? Not a chance.
Our little stunt had worked to a degree. The referendum results came back heavily in favour of ending the war and removing the Cabal. Which wasn’t much of a surprise. Of course, there had been riots, lynchings and various other examples of vigilante justice, but humanity did all right. Governments didn’t topple, though they got stripped down very quickly, as did militaries, intelligence agencies and many corporations. Some very junior people ended up in positions of power. There was a degree of chaos. People were promoted one minute and gone the next as something new was uncovered about them. I guessed it was going to take some adjustment on the part of those who would be our leaders to realise the degree of integrity that was now expected of them. Or perhaps had always been expected of them but was now being enforced. Human society didn’t collapse, it abided. The governments and the corporations saw the tide and decided to go with it, to use it to their best advantage, which normally meant they had to play nicely.
Many of the Cabal had been put under house arrest. Some of them had their funds confiscated and as a result their medical care could not continue. They didn’t so much die as get turned off. Others had the security at their facilities overwhelmed and were killed by vigilante mobs. I suspect some of those mobs contained well-trained, ex-military personnel.
Of course, Cronin escaped. His escape is going to be talked about by space pilots for the next thousand years. Already it’s considered one of the most audacious bits of flying ever done. Just a shame it was done for such a poor reason. One of the Black Squadron’s new generation of frigates, USS Hatteras, managed to dock with the elevator that Cronin was on while it was still in transit, before it had reached High Brazilia. Once the elevator cleared the atmosphere, the frigate matched its speed and trajectory, then they cut their way into the elevator’s emergency airlock and evacuated Cronin and his people.
Only about a quarter of the elevator’s crew and passengers were killed as a result of explosive decompression before they managed to trigger the inner airlocks. The frigate took a lot of damage from High Brazil
ia’s orbital weapons and space force, but again another one of their angelic hackers wreaked havoc and the Hatteras and Cronin escaped to set sail for another system.
Some of those who had been involved with the Cabal or were otherwise doing very naughty things managed to survive. Other new leaders came from total obscurity, often straight off the streets. Everyone from community leaders to gang bosses found themselves in positions of power. Things stayed the same and things changed a lot. I think they were going to improve. I think humanity did good purely by not pulling itself apart in the face of massive change.
The transition could’ve been a lot worse. Whenever anyone tried to take advantage others would see them coming and step up. How this didn’t end up in total chaos I don’t know. Maybe humanity was just sick of fighting. Maybe we were growing up, though that seemed less likely. In retrospect what we had done was stupid on such a scale that the word irresponsible didn’t really cover it. We had not thought it through and we had got very, very lucky. Not just the seven of us but everyone in the system; it could’ve been so much worse. Well, Buck hadn’t been very lucky. I didn’t feel too lucky either.
Mudge had played a dangerous game. His media manipulation had been as canny as anything the Cabal could offer, though a lot more reckless. If anyone thought to check, and I reckoned someone would one day, he’d screened the footage that God showed of people watching our little revolution show. He’d made sure that God showed none of the places where it was bad - child molesters being lynched, Fortunate Sons opening up into crowds, government and corporate buildings being torched. He’d gambled that most people would be too overwhelmed by the news and too relieved by the apparent end of the war to misbehave too badly. Then when people got the idea that this was a celebration and not a riot they would act as their own good example. It worked, but like I said, risky. Our world could just as easily have burned.
So why wasn’t I holed up somewhere waiting for death? Going out surrounded by hookers, drugs and good whisky? Why was I on this fucking ship going back to Sirius, a place I’d sworn I’d never return to? We just seemed to be pushing our luck further and further; eventually something had to kill us all. You can’t buck the odds for this long and you don’t continue to take risks like this and expect to live.
I felt like we’d done our bit. Now it was time for the government and the military to step in and deal with Demiurge, Crom and the Black Squadrons, but this wasn’t enough for Gregor. In fact, he pointed out that surely that was the whole point of what we had done: that we ourselves had to start taking responsibility rather than hoping someone else would handle it. Gregor said that we had to deal with Crom. By the time the governments reacted it could be too late. More to the point, he knew how and where Crom was going to be released. He was going no matter what. I was going to argue - it just seemed such a waste after all we’d been through - but I was dying anyway and I owed him. I hadn’t looked very hard for him when I’d got back. Mudge had but I hadn’t.
The various governments of Earth were coming to a consensus surprisingly quickly, aided by the newfound transparency, that the Cabal, Rolleston, Cronin and the Black Squadrons were all bad. They were putting plans into place to deal with the threat posed by Crom and Demiurge. There were just a couple of things that were slowing them down.
They had lost contact with the colonial fleets. Any ship they sent they didn’t hear back from, presumably because they were being sequestered by Demiurge despite the ships going out with God in their systems. The colonial fleets’ equipment was the most up to date. Although Earth’s defences were supposed to be top notch, the ships they had in-system tended to be two or three generations old. They were serviceable craft that had made it through the war but no match for the modern ships on the front line. Not surprisingly, the various Earth governments were not in an incredible hurry to send their protection out of system to deal with Demiurge or Crom.
All this, as well as how disorganised inter-governmental cooperation was at the best of times, had pretty much ground possible responses to Demiurge and Crom to a halt.
That was when Air Marshal Kaaria of the Kenyan Orbital Command came to visit us. He was almost as pissed off with us as he was with Rolleston. We had, after all, pretty much compromised all military operational security. He had a point. However, we hadn’t fried most of his C&C staff. He wanted Rolleston dead nearly as much as we did. The fearsome African officer pulled some strings and found us a ship and suggested that we do the rest of our healing en route to somewhere we could help undo some of the damage we’d done. I felt he was being a little unfair, and regardless of how much he wanted Rolleston’s head and despite how much I hated the bastard I had no interest in fighting the Major again.
Mudge had listened to Gregor’s plan to go to Sirius and then said no. He said he had too much to do on Earth and besides, he wanted to capitalise on his fame. One of the transmissions that caught up with us just before we set sail had a news story in it about certain youths who were starting to dress like Mudge. I wasn’t sure whether to be amused or worried by that, maybe a bit of both. Pagan also decided against coming. He didn’t see what he had to offer and he felt he’d done enough. Besides, he thought that he should concentrate his efforts on finding a way to deal with Demiurge.
Balor was in. I wasn’t sure why, maybe for the thrill of it. Maybe he just needed a bit of life affirmation after getting his arse kicked, and nothing affirms life like near-certain death.
Gibby was in, which was good because we needed someone to pilot the ship. He was quiet and withdrawn. I just hoped that he didn’t want to follow Buck immediately. On the other hand, this was a good place to do that.
I had assumed that Morag wasn’t going to go. There was no need for her to. She had a distant look in her eyes, her new eyes, when we were discussing it. Finally she announced that she was coming with us. I started to object. I wanted to tell her that she’d done it, finally made something that could be better for her. That she could live and hopefully live well. That she would be needed to help deal with Demiurge. Anything to make her stay on Earth so she didn’t throw away her life on this suicide mission, but one look from her told me I’d forgone the right to have such opinions.
Pagan said what I’d been thinking but she was intent on going. She told us that she had to go. Pagan asked her if it was her or Ambassador that wanted to go. Morag silenced him with a look too.
Twenty minutes later Pagan, looking like a beaten man, changed his mind and agreed to come with us. I asked him if he was sure; he said he was. With Morag going Rannu was in, which I was thankful for - the quiet Nepalese was a solid trooper.
The air marshal got us the ship and the other gear we needed. They even delivered it to High Atlantis for us. The Atlantean authorities laid on a shuttle to take us up. Probably because they couldn’t think of anything better to do with us after Cat bullied their security services into not arresting everyone.
The shuttle’s airlock had been about to close when Mudge reappeared.
‘I figured this is going to be a pretty good story as well. Besides, clearly we’re invincible,’ he’d said.
‘Publicity whore,’ I replied.
‘Not just publicity, mate,’ he’d said, but the banter sounded hollow, forced.
‘Invincible?’ Pagan asked. I’d been thinking the same thing: which fight had Mudge been at?
‘Only Buck died,’ Mudge said, grinning. There was an appalled silence but Mudge didn’t stop grinning. Then Gibby started to laugh.
So everyone was in - strange how I couldn’t get happy about that. I’d spent much of the shuttle’s ascent trying not to get caught by Morag staring at her. She was right: her decision was nothing to do with me. It just seemed such a waste.
We couldn’t pronounce the name of the ship but roughly translated it came out as Spear of Understanding, so we just called it Spear. It was a long-range strike craft, the spaceship equivalent of a long-distance bomber. Stealth capable, it was designed to penetrate Th
emspace and deliver its payload at asteroid habitats or command ships. The funny thing was, long-range strike craft had been developed from deep-space, system-survey craft. I wondered how long we would have to wait before we could decommission our weapons of war and use them for more peaceful purposes.
Like some of the lighter frigates, many LRSCs were often refitted to use as special forces delivery platforms for jobs that required slightly more finesse than you could achieve with a guided missile. Well, that’s what they’d told us in the Regiment anyway. The elite Kenyan Reconnaissance Commandos had refitted the Spear for just such a use.
We’d inherited most of the commandos’ gear. Most importantly the refitted bomb bay had contained six Mamluk light mechs. In the same class as the Wraiths, the Mamluks were a more up-to-date light mech/exo-armour with improved stealth and sensor capabilities. Lying prone in their modified missile racks, their matt-black, sensor-absorbing, featureless, almost organic outlines were beautiful to look at. It didn’t matter how much you hated the military, if you had served then you still got a thrill from the hardware. The Mamluks were superb pieces of kit, only the best for equatorial special forces, I guessed. They were outfitted for vacuum operations and already had their propulsion/manoeuvring fins attached. Not quite as strong as the Wraiths, the Mamluks’ interfaces and responses from the servos were a lot faster, meaning they would react quicker than the older exo-armour model.
There was also a slightly older American-made Dog Soldier mech. The Dog Soldier was the only special forces mech ever designed to fulfil a fire-support role. It was not as stealthy or as fast as Mamluks or Wraiths, but was more heavily armed and armoured. Balor had arranged to have the Dog Soldier delivered to the Spear while we’d been en route on the shuttle. Now that we were under sail he was busy modifying it with Pagan’s help so that he could fit into it.
I was worried about the Dog Soldier’s lesser stealth capabilities but I was pretty sure we’d need its firepower. The Mamluks were armed with the most modern derivative of the chain-fed, 20-millimetre Retributor railgun and back-mounted, vertically launched, smartlink-targeted, anti-armour missiles. The Dog Soldier carried the heavier Vengeance 30-millimetre chain-fed railgun with an over-slung, magazine-fed, 105-millimetre mass driver. Basically the mass driver was a semi-automatic, much larger-calibre railgun. It also had an anti-missile/anti-personnel, ball-mounted, laser-defence system and two shoulder-mounted, smartlink-targeted missile batteries. I just hoped that Balor got it ready on time. I also wondered how he’d managed to find it and get it delivered to the Spear that quickly. The Mamluks came in at just over ten feet tall, the Dog Soldier was closer to fifteen feet.
