Veteran

16

I wasn’t sure whether I was more surprised or disappointed to be alive. I felt I needed a rest and this wasn’t it. Smell returned first, antiseptic, which was good as it suggested a hospital. There was the faint rotting smell of low tide, so I was still in New York, and the familiar friendly smell of tobacco.

‘Fag,’ I croaked. I was trying to decide how I felt about opening my eyes. I came to the conclusion that doubtless something bad would happen to me when I did. I felt a cigarette placed between my lips and heard the wheel of an old-fashioned lighter being flicked. It sounded very familiar. A brief warmth on my face and I sucked in the smoke. I didn’t even cough as my internal filters went to work. "S my lighter?’ I asked.

‘Mine now,’ a voice said. It sounded familiar. ‘Tell me, have you ever won a fight?’ I cracked an eye open. I was surprised that my vision seemed to be working just fine. It took a moment for me to recognise his slightly off-kilter features as he’d grown a rather wispy and slightly sad-looking beard and dyed that and his hair dark brown. He was huddled in a parka drinking from a bottle of expensive-looking, proper Russian vodka.

‘Fuck off,’ I said by way of greeting. Mudge smiled, the corners of his eyes turning up round the expensive camera-lens eye implants that he’d used to shoot the war. He took the cigarette back and took a drag on it as he kicked back in the chair. Beneath the jeans he was wearing were, I knew, a pair of top-of-the-line prosthetic legs. He’d always boasted he could run faster than anyone in the troop and would do if things ever got really bad, and he could move really fast when correctly motivated, but he never ran.

‘Did that cunt really tear my arm off?’ I asked. I couldn’t really feel any pain but I was trying to ignore that in case I was paralysed.

‘You mean Mr Nagarkoti?’ Mudge asked, pointing past me. I turned my head and saw Rannu in a bed less than four feet from me. He was awake and watching me, his face impassive as ever. He had medgels and -paks all over his face and the top part of his body. I felt good about that. I answered a lot of questions about how I was feeling by trying to crawl out of the bed to kill him.

‘Easy, tiger,’ Mudge said, grabbing me and pulling me back into bed. The fact that he could do this suggested I wasn’t quite back to my old self just yet. Rannu seemed to find this funny, further infuriating me.

‘Get me a gun, get me a fucking gun!’ I demanded.

‘Shut up,’ Mudge said. ‘And to answer your question, yes, he tore off your arm and beat you with it. It was pretty fucking brutal, man. He just kept beating you with it. Balor had to swing in and stop him. Nobody’s quite sure why you’re alive.’

I turned around to glare at Rannu. His face was impassive again. Then something occurred to me. ‘You saw it?’ I asked.

‘You getting your arse kicked?’

‘I didn’t do that bad.’

‘No, you came a close second. Yeah, I saw. I was driving the media deck.’

‘You filmed us?’

‘Hell yeah. Not every day you can profit from seeing a close friend get beat mostly to death.’ He grinned and the pair of us lapsed into silence. I had a closer look around. We were in some kind of hospital ward, all peeling paint and old beds, but the linen was clean and all the medical equipment couldn’t have been more than twenty or thirty years out of date. There were about a dozen or so beds in here but Mudge, Rannu and I were the only people in the ward. White curtains were pulled across the windows but a pale light shone through the thin material.

‘How long was I out?’ I asked. Mudge took another generous sip from the bottle of vodka and offered me a mouthful. I shook my head but hoped Morag was alive and more importantly still had my whisky. You have to learn to prioritise at a time like this.

‘Three days,’ Mudge said.

‘Jesus!’ Now I was really surprised I wasn’t dead. Why hadn’t Rolleston gotten to me? Why hadn’t Rannu killed me, or failing that, the Grey Lady? I looked down at myself. Like Rannu I was covered in medgels and medpaks. The scar on my chest told me that my cracked subcutaneous chest armour had been replaced. I wondered who’d paid for that. It took me a while to get up the courage to look at my right arm. I was relieved to see it had been reattached. Pak-controlled gel running all the way around the join, knitting flesh to metal.

I was in very little pain and an internal diagnostic told me I was still banged up but healing.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Balor,’ Mudge answered. ‘He’s providing shelter for you and your mates, just like he did for me.’

‘He paid for this?’ I asked.

‘More sort of stole it all. Says you’re under his hospitality. He’s got some funny ideas.’

‘But Rolleston…’ I began.

‘Your friends told me what happened in Hull. This ain’t the Avenues. Rolleston can’t just walk in here.’

‘The Grey Lady can.’ Mudge considered this.

‘Yeah, yeah, she can,’ he admitted, looking down at the bottle he held between his prosthetic legs before looking back up at me. His lenses whirred in their sockets. ‘Your friends tell me you came to New York looking for me.’ I nodded. He gave this some thought. I was suddenly very aware of Rannu in the bed next to me. ‘You trying to get me killed, Douglas?’ Mudge asked evenly.

I began to answer, but as I did the door to the ward opened and Pagan appeared with Morag. Morag was wearing similar clothes to what she’d found in Vicar’s charity bin. A hooded top and combat trousers, but they looked newer and cleaner. Her shaved head now had a covering of light fuzz. I was relieved that her hair was growing back. Pagan looked surprisingly happy to see me awake, or perhaps even alive. Morag smiled and I suddenly felt a lot better.

‘You look a lot better than you did a couple of days ago,’ Pagan said.

No shit, I thought.

‘You okay?’ Morag asked. I held her gaze just a little too long and then nodded. She smiled.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘And can someone get me a gun so we can kill this guy?’ I said, nodding towards Rannu.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Pagan said.

‘He’s with us,’ Morag said. I let this sink in.

‘Says who?’ I asked.

‘We’ve discussed it,’ Pagan said. I couldn’t believe it.

‘That’s great. You trust him? Do you know what he is?’

‘You mean the tattoo?’ Pagan asked. I nodded.

‘I was never a Thug,’ Rannu said from the other bed. I turned to look at him. There was edge in his voice. He’d said Thug with distaste.

‘No? What, you just like the look and the monofilament garrotte?’ I asked.

‘After I left the Regiment I joined the police-’

‘You’re not really filling me with confidence here,’ I said.

‘Jakob!’ Morag said. I turned to her.

‘What?’ I said both angry and surprised.

‘Just listen to him.’

Rannu was waiting patiently for the interruption to be over. ‘They wanted someone with a covert ops background to try and infiltrate the Thugs; I was chosen. High pay, one-off job. I was under for a year getting known in Leicester before they finally let me in.’

‘You must’ve done some bad things,’ I said, perhaps a little pettily. I caught the flinch before his impassive mask returned.

‘Anyway, I made my way up the organisation, getting enough to tear them apart. Getting enough to go after Berham. We were just about ready to go when Rolleston approached me.’

‘About us?’ I asked. Rannu shook his head.

‘About some domestic wetwork. I said I couldn’t. He insisted. I explained the situation. He told me his work was more important. I said no again and he burnt me,’ Rannu said. He said it matter of factly but I could see the emotion beneath the surface. This guy hated Rolleston as much as I did. Or he was a good actor. I let out a low whistle. To burn someone’s cover while they were deep was just about the cardinal sin in covert ops.

‘How’d it go down?’ I asked.

‘How’d you think? Badly. Lot of dead people. I only just made it out. Two months in hospital being rebuilt and another month in recovery after that.’ I knew that to do that amount of damage they must’ve tortured him.

‘So when Rolleston came to speak to you again you went to work for him?’ I asked. I heard Mudge’s sharp intake of breath. I watched Rannu as he struggled with his composure.

‘You know the score,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much choice.’

‘But now you’re all turned round?’ I asked.

‘Now I appear to have an option,’ he said, looking at Morag. I felt a surge of anger, maybe something else.

‘Good story, but by your own admission you’re an experienced undercover operator. How do we know you’re not just trying to infiltrate us?’ I asked.

‘For what purpose?’ I could see him beginning to get irritated now. ‘I won. Balor will hand you over to me now if I ask him. I already know your plan. I have everything I need to complete my job, so what do I have to gain? I believe the girl can set us free.’ That was weird. Morag was looking down and blushing. I wondered what was going on.

Still red-cheeked, Morag looked up at me and took my hand, the left one, the one that was still flesh.

‘I think he’s on the level,’ she said earnestly.

‘Hooker’s intuition?’ I said before I could stop myself, but she just smiled.

‘Something like that.’

Mudge looked down at my hand in hers and raised an eyebrow. She blushed again and let go. I glanced over at Rannu but he showed no reaction.

‘We could be forgiven for thinking that you’re just pissed off he so thoroughly kicked your arse,’ Mudge said, smiling.

‘It wasn’t that thorough,’ I muttered before turning to Rannu. ‘So you kick my arse and now you’ve turned over a new leaf and want to work with us.’ He shook his head. I noticed Pagan and Morag looking distinctly uncomfortable. ‘What?’ I asked.

‘I decided while listening to Morag at Balor’s table,’ Rannu said. I just stared at him, trying to master the ability to talk again.

‘Before the fight!’ I shouted. Rannu nodded. I spent another couple of seconds speechless. ‘Then why the fuck was there a fight?’ I demanded.

‘Two reasons,’ Rannu said calmly. ‘The first was I don’t like not completing missions, so I needed to know I was capable of it, which I was.’

‘Hey, you’re in hospital too, pal.’

‘Yeah, but not because you pulled off his arm and beat him half to death,’ Mudge said, grinning. I glared at him. ‘Sorry.’

‘And the other?’ I asked.

‘To save Balor’s face,’ Pagan said. I didn’t get it. ‘If Rannu had joined us straight away then we would’ve been the only party responsible for bringing trouble down on New York and he would need to make an example out of us. With Rannu still apparently representing Rolleston, he could pit the two sides against each other and to his people he would still seem to be in control.’

‘I got made an example of!?’ I protested.

‘But we were in control of that,’ Pagan said. ‘Well, we were supposed to be,’ he said, glaring at Rannu.

Rannu shrugged. ‘I was upset when I lost my ancestral kukri.’

‘And you don’t think tearing my arm off and trying to beat me to death with it was an overreaction to a lost knife?’ I screamed at him.

Rannu considered this. ‘Not in context. I’m still upset about it.’

‘Looked good on the viz,’ Mudge said. The thing was, even if Rannu was on the level, and I was beginning to think he was, you just couldn’t walk away from the kind of violence that Rannu and I had done to each other. You can’t just shake hands and let bygones be bygones. Every time I looked at him my shoulder ached. I mulled this over. I didn’t like the way the others were looking at me, as if they were waiting for my approval. I decided to change the subject.

‘What were you saying to Balor about secrets?’ I asked Morag. She smiled slyly.

‘Something I found sifting through the data Ambassador stole when he got free. Balor cut a deal with the CIA to get left in peace in New York. He does a bit of work for them here and there, let’s them use New York when they need to. None of his people know and he wants to keep it that way.’ I could see why. His reputation was that of a free agent able to defy governments. I’d even heard him described as a one-man nation state.

‘And how’s God coming along?’ I asked. Pagan said nothing and just looked at Mudge.

‘Never fucking ends,’ Mudge said. I guessed he was referring to always being kept out of military briefings.

‘Oh, come on,’ I said. ‘If the Leicester Strangler over there is in and you’ve told Balor and probably half of New York, I don’t see why my mate should be excluded. I’ll vouch for him: he’s solid.’

‘He’s a journalist,’ Pagan said.

‘Whereas pirates and someone who you thought was working for Rolleston are trustworthy?’ Mudge asked, taking another swig from his bottle of vodka before offering it to Morag.

‘Different situation,’ Pagan said.

‘I think operational security’s a bit fucked,’ I said, watching with some amusement as Morag took a big swig of vodka.

‘Besides,’ Mudge said, taking the bottle back from a resistant Morag. ‘I know what you’re planning. Sounds fucking stupid to me, but don’t worry, you won’t have seen my byline on much recently.’

‘So now we’ve established that we’re all friends, how’s God coming along? Are we all saved yet? Can I go home and get drunk?’ Which reminded me. ‘Have you got my whisky?’ I asked Morag.

‘I drank it,’ Morag said apologetically.

‘All of it!’ I was coming to the conclusion that I preferred being unconscious. Judging by the way Rannu was glaring at me I might soon get the chance again. I wondered what his problem was now.

‘Balor helped,’ Morag said. ‘It was my birthday.’

‘Fucking Balor!’ I spat incredulously.

She shrugged and looked quite uncomfortable. ‘He’s kind of cute when you get to know him.’

‘Can we discuss boys later?’ Pagan asked. ‘In between Morag’s whisky binges we’ve made some good progress.’

‘You’ve been helping?’ I asked her. She nodded. Pagan looked uncomfortable. ‘How long?’ I asked Pagan.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I would hope sooner rather than later.’

‘Assume there won’t be a later,’ I suggested. ‘So what do we do?’

‘Balor says you can stay as long as you want,’ Mudge said.

‘Rolleston knows we’re here?’ I asked Rannu. The ex-Ghurkha nodded. ‘So why not just hit us with another orbital?’

‘The political fallout from Dundee was too heavy,’ Rannu answered. ‘He will not get access to another orbital strike.’

‘Besides,’ Mudge continued, ‘if he didn’t kill everyone he’d spend the next twenty years fighting terrorist insurgency from vengeful special forces types, and I think that Balor’s got an ASAT nuke somewhere. Basically it’s more trouble than it’s worth.’

An anti satellite nuke, a ground to orbital weapon, I gave this some thought. ‘Even Balor wouldn’t do that,’ I said.

‘He wants to burn brightly and be famous, of course he would,’ Mudge said. I saw Pagan nodding in agreement.

‘Conventional forces?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. Mudge let out a humourless laugh.

‘Nightmare scenario, heavily defended city with enough supplies and booby traps to fight an indefinite guerrilla war. Balor and his Fomorians could fight it from underwater, as could a lot of the other vets here. Again more trouble than it’s worth.’

‘Rolleston could buy us,’ I suggested.

‘Balor’s given his word,’ Pagan said.

‘Well that’s reassuring,’ I said sarcastically.

Mudge sighed. ‘Look, Balor’s unquestionably fucked in the head but he keeps his word. It’s one of the reasons he commands so much loyalty. You’re under his protection. He’ll die for you if he had to and do it smiling.’

‘Suddenly we have so many friends. So all we have to do is stay here and try not to get assassinated?’ Mudge and Pagan nodded. This was beginning to sound good to me. I could get drunk and wait for the Grey Lady to come in relative comfort. Maybe they even had some sense booths here. We couldn’t stop the Grey Lady; in fact I wondered why she hadn’t already killed us all. Then I remembered why we’d come to New York in the first place.

‘Why are you here?’ I asked Mudge as he lit up another cigarette. Morag stole it from him and I stole it from her before she could take a drag. Mudge lit another one and looked around at the assembled people. I sighed. ‘Have we not already decided that we are all friends?’ I asked.

Mudge shrugged. ‘Sure you want to hear this?’ he asked, the tip of his cigarette glowing as he took another drag.

‘No, but we’ve come a long way and nearly died twice doing so, so we might as well.’

‘I think Gregor’s still alive,’ he said. He took another drag on his cigarette and watched my expression. I suppose I’d known I was going to hear about Gregor but I guess deep down I’d assumed he was dead. Maybe it would’ve been easier that way because I wasn’t obligated to a dead man.

‘Where?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What makes you think he’s alive?’ I asked. The others were quiet.

‘Because Rolleston really wanted someone infected by a Ninja. After your trial I asked around, spoke to a couple of German guys who’d been in the KSK and a Delta operator. They’d both been working with squads taken out by a Ninja. In both cases the Ninja had left one of the members of the squad alive after somehow infecting them.’

‘Just like Gregor,’ I breathed. Mudge nodded.

‘In both cases Rolleston and the Grey Lady show up soon after, looking for the infected guys, but in both cases the infected guy was totally fragged when he was found. Neither Delta or KSK were taking any chances.’ Rolleston had wanted someone infected and that was why he’d dropped us in the mincer.

‘Why were they infecting people and then leaving them to be found? Germ warfare?’ I asked.

‘Most probably,’ Mudge said. ‘But who knows how they think?’ I couldn’t help but glance over at Morag when he said that. She didn’t notice but I felt Pagan looking at me.

‘So Rolleston’s got Gregor somewhere, infected by an alien germ?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, maybe,’ Mudge said, taking another long pull from the bottle of vodka.

‘But you don’t know where he is?’ I asked.

‘Nope.’ I felt some relief. Even if MacDonald was alive it sounded unlikely that there would be any point in rescuing him; in fact it would make things worse. I was relieved that I was free of the obligation. In my head I could hear myself apologising to my absent friend. ‘But I think I know who does know,’ Mudge finished. I heard Pagan groan. I think he saw what was coming.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘Everywhere Rolleston and Bran went looking for those infected by the Ninja they were flown-’

‘By two degenerate fuckwits,’ I finished for him, Gibby and Buck, the two cyberbilly Night Stalkers from the 160th SOAR. ‘You think they know where Gregor is?’

‘I think they would have transported him for Rolleston. It was what they were doing when we last saw them.’

‘Let’s just stay here, finish the job at hand and worry about this later,’ Pagan said in what I guessed he hoped was a reasonable-sounding voice. Truth be told it was a reasonable request, very reasonable, and I wholeheartedly agreed with him, but some things just aren’t reasonable.

‘Good idea,’ Mudge said.

‘You know where they are?’ I asked Mudge. He took another mouthful of the vodka. I wondered how drunk he was, how many bottles he’d had today.

‘Knew where they were,’ he said. ‘I was on their trail. Fully ready to beat what I wanted to know out of that pair of cunts when the Grey Lady caught up with me and made it perfectly clear that I should drop the matter.’

‘See, it’s old info. They’ll have moved on by now,’ Pagan pleaded.

‘Where are they?’ I asked. Thinking I’d like to have a violent little chat with them myself.

‘They deserted the 160th-’

‘They probably got killed by Rolleston,’ Pagan interrupted.

‘No, they definitely deserted. They made it to Crawling Town.’ Mudge upended the vodka bottle, draining the rest of it and tossing the bottle into a bin.

Crawling Town was a place as infamous as Balor’s New York. Well, not exactly a place; it was a city-sized, always-moving convoy made up of disparate gangs, road tribes and other disenfranchised people. They were left alone by the authorities because they travelled the Dead Roads, the line of heavily polluted and irradiated land that ran down the east side of the US from Lake Eerie to east Texas. An area considered largely uninhabitable by what passed for sane people these days. Pagan could see what I was thinking.

‘Have you not learnt?’ Pagan asked. I looked up at him.

‘You’re here now doing your thing. We need to do our thing, and we’ll go and do it whether you help or not. You’re safe now. Stay here, complete your little electronic god. Besides, New York seems to have worked out well for everyone but me.’ I didn’t add that it had worked out better than if we’d gone to Russia, but I think Pagan got the message.

‘You’re going out into the wasteland to chase a months-old lead to find someone who’s probably infected by something virulent and highly fucking dangerous. Will you listen to yourself?’ Pagan asked.

‘Yeah, we should stay here while you make God, because that’s more sensible,’ Mudge said. He sounded distracted. I think he was looking around for more booze. Pagan glared at him. Thing is. Pagan was right. The shots were too long, even for us. If we did find Gregor, chances are we’d just have to do him a favour and put a bullet through his head anyway.

‘Jakob, we need your help. We need your protection and we need you running interference for us. If the Grey Lady comes, you and Rannu are the best hope Morag and I have.’ It didn’t seem like much of a hope but I liked the way he’d emphasised that Morag needed me. Manipulative cunt. I looked at Mudge. He’d found another bottle from beneath my bed. He was watching me again, waiting for my response, his lenses moving in their sockets. I reached over and took the bottle from him.

‘You recording this?’ I asked him, and took a long swig of the vodka, enjoying it burn down my gullet.

‘Hell, yeah,’ Mudge was grinning.

‘Brilliant,’ Pagan muttered.

‘He’s right, you know?’ I said to Mudge.

Mudge nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Maybe we can do something if this works?’ I said, sounding pathetic even to myself. I tried to cover it by taking another long swig of vodka.

‘You going to give that back?’ Mudge asked. I held the bottle out to him but Morag took it. I suddenly noticed how flushed and nervous she looked. She took a long swig from the bottle.

‘You okay?’ I asked her. She nodded.

‘I think we should go to Crawling Town,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think your friend is diseased.’

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Pagan muttered.

‘What makes you say that?’ Mudge asked. Morag didn’t say anything.

‘This is bullshit,’ Pagan said.

‘Losing your religion?’ Mudge asked. Pagan glared at him.

‘Look, Morag,’ the old hacker began. ‘I know a lot has happened to you, and you think that you know-’

‘Don’t fucking patronise me,’ Morag said. That resolve of hers was back. I wished it wasn’t in this case. I didn’t want to go to Crawling Town. ‘He’s not infected. They were trying to communicate.’

‘How can you know that?’ Pagan asked, but I think we both knew the answer.

‘Just believe her,’ Rannu said. ‘I’ll go with you to Crawling Town,’ he added, sounding very formal. I looked over at him incredulously.

‘What the fuck’s it got to do with you?’ I demanded.

‘More the merrier,’ Mudge said. He’d taken the bottle of vodka from Morag and raised it to Rannu, who bowed.

‘Pagan, why don’t you stay and work on God? We’ll go. Balor will protect you,’ I said. He looked very uncomfortable with my suggestion.

‘I’ll come,’ he said finally.

That was when I realised two things. Pagan was happy when we were doing his insane things but not when we wanted to do ours. After all, going to Crawling Town wasn’t any madder than trying to make God, in fact probably less so, and if there was a chance we could help Gregor then I owed it to him. The other thing I realised was that Pagan really needed Morag’s help. That worried me.

‘This is insane,’ Pagan muttered again.

‘What is?’ A voice growled from the doorway. I looked up to see the massive and alien figure of our host standing in the entrance to the ward. He was dripping wet and leaving a trail of unpleasantly foul New York water behind him. He held Rannu’s kukri in his left hand. I think it was the first time I ever saw Rannu looking happy, but then again I hadn’t seen his face when he was beating me unconscious with my own arm.

‘You found it,’ he said, grinning. Balor walked over to the ex-Ghurkha’s bed. He didn’t smell very nice; only Mudge and Rannu seemed not to mind.

‘You deserved it back,’ Balor said.

‘He’s pretty much been searching for it non-stop for three days,’ Mudge said.

‘He’s got a lot of time on his hands then?’ I asked.

‘I think it’s sweet,’ Morag said. I wondered what the mischievous look was about as I tried to ignore a sudden surge of emotion I didn’t want to analyse too deeply.

‘I think it’s obsessive,’ Mudge suggested.

Balor stuck out a thick reptilian tongue that was sort of a bruised purple colour.

‘Very attractive,’ I muttered. Morag glared at me.

Balor ran the kukri blade across his tongue, drawing blood. All of us watched this in surprise.

‘Why?’ Mudge finally managed to ask.

‘Because the kukri cannot be put away before it’s bloodied,’ Balor said, blood dripping from his maw, and handed the curved knife back to Rannu. He seemed just as surprised as the rest of us.

‘It did draw blood – mine,’ I said.

Balor turned to me. ‘Do you feel more alive now?’ He seemed to be serious.

‘What, are you fucking mad? I just got near beat to death! Strangely that doesn’t make me feel more alive, just fucking sore!’ I shouted, sitting up in bed and getting pushed back gently by Mudge. Balor loomed over me, his face distorting with what I assumed was anger.

‘What did I tell you about respect in my house?’ he growled at me.

‘Oh, I respect you. As a fucking psycho!’ I spat before my sense of self-preservation kicked in. He considered what I said. I assumed he was just going to reach down and do something violent to me.

‘Good,’ he finally said, but not before I was covered in cold sweat. ‘You are all welcome, just tell me what you need.’ And he turned and walked out. I suddenly felt very tired, too tired. I realised I was crashing and crashing hard. I turned to look at Mudge. He was smiling at me.

‘You stimmed me?’ I asked. He nodded. I faded quickly. Like moving backwards quickly down a black tunnel. Further and further away from them all. The last thing I heard was Pagan berating Mudge for his irresponsibility.

The SAW ran dry. It had been my last cassette for the weapon and I’d long ago exhausted grenades for the launcher so I just dropped the weapon in the mud. I turned and jumped over the remains of a low wall. We’d been fighting a retreat since we landed. We were now in what had once been a small town. It had been some kind of centre for the surrounding rural communities when people had been able to grow things here. Now it was just a series of mazelike low walls sticking out of the mud, traces of the buildings that had once housed a community. It was mostly night; Sirius B was low in the sky. Fire and manoeuvre was rote now, we didn‘t even really think about it.

I tore the Benelli assault shotgun from the smartgrip back scabbard strapped to my pack and started firing three-round bursts at the Berserks sprinting towards us. The flechette penetrators burrowing into their hardened chitinous bodies before their explosive cores detonated. It was like watching them get chewed up from within. I was going through the motions. Crosshairs from the smartgun link over the next alien, fire, repeat until it was time to reload. Ignore the fact that what little cover I had was being eaten away by their returning fire. Ignore my multiple wounds. Ignore that we were dead anyway.

I watched Gregor sprinting towards me. I covered him as best I could. He turned and my audio dampeners kicked in as he fired a long burst from the railgun at the charging Berserks. I watched as several of them seemed to explode into liquid mid-stride. Gregor hit the quick-release catch on his gyroscopic harness. The whole rig along with the gun and ammo pack fell into the mud. Gregor was running again, pulling his personal defence weapon from a holster on his thigh, unfolding it as he ran. Leaping over the wall, sliding into the mud nearby before scrambling back to join us and then opening fire.

Like most signal types, Shaz favoured a laser. I could feel the heat from its beams as he fired bursts of bright red light into the remaining Berserks. The Tyler Optics laser carbine was set at a frequency designed to superheat what it hit rather than burn through it. Where he hit the Berserks I saw their solidified liquid flesh turn to a greasy black steam. I could hear him through my access to the command net requesting air and artillery support for an immediate evac. I could hear the hopelessness in Shaz’s voice. We were getting nothing from command. I understood the necessity of sacrifice but there seemed to be no gain in sending us to die like this.

Behind us I could hear Ash’s SAW firing long bursts accompanied by Mudge’s AK-47. The AK-47 was a replica of a pre-FHC weapon chambered for 9-millimetre long that he insisted on using. They were all around us and closing. We kept on taking Them down, thinning their numbers, but They kept on charging at us. The uneasy joke had always been that if They ever learnt tactics humanity was really screwed.

Concentrated shard fire had Shaz. Gregor and myself duck down into the mud as the low wall was chewed away and they were on us. I managed to get off a shot point blank into one of the eight-foot-tall monstrosities before dropping the Benelli and extending my knuckle blades. I rammed the blades up, sliding under chitinous plates like they trained us. augmented muscle and prosthetic driving the plates apart as black liquid poured all over me.

With some effort I heaved the dying alien to one side. The Berserk behind him swung a limb, ending in some kind of spiked weapon, into my rigid breastplate. It hit so hard it cracked the plate, causing the inertial undersuit beneath to harden. I landed on my back in the mud, retracted my knuckle blades, drew my laser pistol and the Mastodon and fired a lot. It seemed to take a while but the advancing Berserk fell back into the mud.

I managed to get to my feet before the next one tackled me and sent me sprawling back down. I dropped the pistols and just stabbed repeatedly into it as its power-assisted claws tried to peel me out of my armour. I was still stabbing a long time after it had stopped moving and had leaked all over me. It smelt like burnt plastic.

Eventually it dissolved over me. Gregor was there to pick me up, as ever. It had gone quiet. I retrieved my weapons, watching as Gregor cleaned black ichor off his sword bayonet. Shaz was doing likewise with his kirpan. Mudge was changing a clip and Ash was just looking out over the low wall.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. It seemed very quiet. It was now nearly dark. We were entering the short night of a planet in a binary system.

‘They’re just standing there,’ Ash said shaking her head. Mudge stood up.

‘Get down!’ I hissed, Gregor and Ash doing the same.

‘They’re not doing anything,’ Mudge said. He studied them for a while. I wondered how wasted he was and what it was this time. I crawled over to where Mudge was stood, cradling my automatic shotgun in the crooks of my elbows. I peeked over the low wall. Mudge and Ash were right. The Berserks were standing, swaying as if in some unfelt wind about two hundred metres back. Between them and us were a multitude of black, viscous oily puddles that showed where we’d killed their mates. A feeling was making its way through my fatigue, something not felt for a while – interest.

‘You ever heard of anything like this?’ I asked Mudge. who was intently studying the sky. I’d asked him because Mudge was one of the few of us who took an active interest in the rest of the war. He shook his head.

‘Can’t see it being anything good for us,’ Ash mumbled in her thick Brummie accent.

‘What do you want to do?’ Gregor asked. I had no idea. There were obviously too many of them for us to fight. I shrugged.

‘Get yourselves sorted. Patch yourselves and your armour up as best you can, check your ammo, ready secondary and tertiary weapons. Shaz, I know it’s a waste of time but keep on the command net. Got any time after that, we’ll have a brew.’

‘Then what?’ Ash asked. I could hear Mudge giggling.

‘If they haven’t killed us and they’re still playing silly buggers then we head back to the firebase and see if we’re in time for the last shuttle.’

‘Or we’re sharing the planet with a lot of angry demons,’ Shaz said.

‘Where’s Ash gone?’ I heard Mudge say. Then I saw the look of horror on Gregor’s face and Shaz screamed. I swung round bringing my shotgun up. I found an awestruck Mudge staring at a bit of what I can only describe as dark air.

‘She got sucked in,’ Mudge whispered.

‘Mudge!’ Gregor shouted as he brought his PDW up to cover the dark air. ‘We need you in this world!’ This seemed to bring Mudge out of it. He staggered back bringing his AK-47 up to cover it. A red beam lanced out turning part of the dark air into greasy steam.

‘Cease fire!’ I shouted. ‘Shaz, you watch our backs. I want to know what the rest of them are doing.’ Shaz stood there staring. ‘Shaz!’ He looked up at me, his eyes wide around his lenses, and then he nodded. Through the split screen on my internal visual display I could see through Shaz’s helmet camera.

The Berserks were still holding off in their rough perimeter. The dark air hadn’t move. It still stood where Ash had stood.

‘Mudge, what happened?’ I demanded, cursing, though not blaming, the journalist for choosing to get high now. The war was easier for him as a hallucination. I could see his knuckles whitening on the grip of his assault rifle.

‘Mudge, do you want me to come over there and beat the shit out of you?’ Gregor asked quietly. This seemed to shake him out of it. I guess we all listened to Gregor no matter how wasted.

‘It moved up behind her,’ Mudge whispered, but I was hearing it across the patrol’s tactical net. ‘And just yanked her in.’ On my internal visual display I saw Shaz’s helmet camera turn from the perimeter and back to the dark air.

‘Shaz,’ I said. The signalman turned back to the perimeter. Mudge giggled again. I resisted the urge to shoot him.

‘It was like a spatial anomaly,’ the journalist said, ‘a little spatial anomaly.’ Gregor and I exchanged looks. Ash fell out of the dark air, what was left of her. She was covered in her own blood. Her body looked like one big wound as if she had been pierced in every part of her flesh. We lit the night up with our muzzle flashes.

Back again. There was just one person at the end of the bed this time. Just Morag. She appeared to be checking over an auto pistol. She had her legs crossed on the bed and I could see a holster strapped to her upper thigh.

‘Where’d you get that?’ I tried to say, but it came out a slurred mess. She looked up at me, made the gun safe and holstered it.

‘Balor gave it to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘People tend to give pretty girls things,’ I slurred. I was slowly beginning to sound a bit more like I was speaking English. Whatever I said it was the wrong thing, judging by her expression. I glanced over at the bed next to me. Rannu was gone.

‘Where’s the Thug?’ I asked, sounding petty even to my own ears. Morag looked up. She seemed kind of angry.

‘He’s away being a warrior with Balor somewhere.’ And she began to get up.

‘Morag, wait.’ She stopped and turned to look at me. ‘You get a cutlass with that?’ I said, nodding at the pistol. ‘Maybe an eyepatch? She cracked a smile but didn’t sit back down. ‘How long have you been sat here?’

She shrugged. ‘A little while.’ She sounded half pissed off and half coy.

‘Prefer it when I was unconscious?’ I asked.

‘You’re nicer,’ she said, smiling again.

‘You okay?’ I asked. She nodded.

‘I was worried about you,’ she managed to say and then looked embarrassed.

‘I was worried about me too.’

‘I didn’t like seeing what happened to you.’ For all the violence I knew she would’ve seen just by growing up in Fintry and the Rigs, somehow she’d not managed to become inured to it. Then I realised what she was really trying to say. I’d been really stupid.

‘You didn’t like watching me do what I did?’ I said. She considered what to say next but it was written all over her face.

‘Morag…’ I began.

‘I’m being selfish.’ She stood up.

‘Wait,’ I said, and she stopped. ‘Morag, look at me.’ She wouldn’t. ‘Please.’ I couldn’t make out her expression. ‘I would never hurt you. Do you understand me?’ Finally she nodded. ‘Please sit down, stay with me.’ I tried to keep the pleading tone out of my voice but she sat down again. Not surprisingly there was an uncomfortable silence, then she looked up at me.

‘I wouldn’t let you,’ she said, her voice full of that steel-like resolve. It was a declaration. She was never going to be a victim again. Initially I was taken aback. I didn’t want her to think of me in the same light as all the other arseholes she’d met in her short life, but then again maybe I was. Finally I nodded and smiled.

‘So, you like Balor then?’ I asked as casually as I could manage a little while later. Morag let out a little laugh.

‘I was winding you up,’ she said. Good job, I thought.

‘What’s with you and Rannu?’ I asked.

‘I think he thinks I’m some kind of prophet,’ she said, seeming partly embarrassed and partly amused by this.

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’ll piss Pagan off.’ She shrugged. I could feel myself fading again but more naturally this time. I was just tired.