Veteran

28

Why I hate Rolleston.

See, all the stuff that he’d done up to now was bad but you could see it was the kind of bad a prick like him had to do as part of his job. I didn’t like him, would have no objection to him being dead, but I didn’t really hate him yet, largely because I was just really happy to not be dead. The idea of revenge against him for leaving us there was a distant and unrealistic dream.

We were so lucky to be picked up. It was a Congon search and rescue team doing a final sweep. They were looking for some of their own special forces but they found us. When we were evacced it felt like we were the last assault shuttle to leave Dog 4. The sky was lit up by ground-based fire aimed at our fleet in high orbit. It was beautiful and seemed somehow unreal. To the Congons we must have looked like walking corpses. Neither Mudge or I did anything much but stare as the paramedics looked after our wounds. I don’t think we even thanked them.

The Santa Maria was a pre-war freighter out of the High Brazilia shipyards. A civilian ship on what amounted to a permanent military contract. Largely it was a case of hauling equipment and munitions out and ferrying casualties or personnel back for the old freighter. We hated these ships because the cargo holds were modular, basically a self-contained hold with life support attached, completely separated from the rest of the ship and built by the contractor who came in with the cheapest price. They were a prison with cold, thin walls that separated you from vacuum.

A return journey like this was made up of odds and sods, basically survivors, whoever had made it off You weren’t there in your units. The command structure was not intact. The closest thing we had to authority was a couple of MPs. They had an armoured office that they stayed inside because if they stepped outside they’d be killed. Nobody liked MPs and nobody liked the authority that they represented. In our case the MPs were Yanks.

Left to our own devices things got Darwinian very quickly. Victims were designated, scores were settled, the food chain was established and territory was staked out. There was a mixture of nationalities but mainly British, French and American, developing world nations. The Congo forces, I guess, didn’t have to use eighty-year-old, piece-of-shit freighters to take their people home. The Yanks were by far the biggest national group but they were heavily divided internally.

There was also a much higher than normal special forces population on board. This was going to make establishing our place in the food chain a bit more difficult than normal. The drink and drugs would last two, maybe three days at most; after that there was only the rum ration and that was never enough. So I began looking for the sacrifice. The sacrifice was a message to the rest of the inmates; it meant I wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want to be the Daddy, someone who was willing to work for that title could have it, it just meant that I was more trouble than I was worth not to be left alone. The sacrifice had to be a loud-mouthed arsehole with the muscle and the backup to enforce his bullying ways. Somehow it was always a male. In this case he was a borderline cyber psychotic from 2 Para. I killed him for a bottle of whisky. It wasn’t even good whisky. That was my message. We had another eight days to go.

Mudge did his thing; I sat on my bunk and drank. I pretty much ignored what was going on, not really thinking. I remember anger and numbness. It was a weird state of non-feeling. I had conversations with Mudge but he did most of the talking and I don’t remember anything about them. Mudge had to pretty much force me to look after my wounds.

I remembered Vicar though. He’d been wearing a soiled uniform with no insignia or rank. His hair was matted and filthy, as was his beard. He looked insane – there was something wrong with his wild and bloodshot eyes. The ugly but functional military machinery that made up half his head didn’t help his appearance and he would not shut up. He was on something because he needed no sleep, and he preached endlessly. He ranted about God, the end times and of course Them, the demons, until his mouth bled. There had been a number of attempts to beat him into silence but something stopped his attackers from finishing the job each time. Maybe it was religion, maybe they felt it was bad luck to kill someone that mad. Nobody really wanted to get very close to him.

He’d been there when we’d walked into the hold. He’d raised an arm to point at me and begun shouting, drool running down through his black, wiry beard.

‘I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of my God.’

I pushed past him trying to ignore the smell.

Vicar’s ravings along with the creaking of the hull became the ambient sound track aboard the Santa Maria. Initially the preaching grated on me, like it grated on everyone else. Everyone in the hold had to deal with religious signals types. You needed to have tolerance as communications kept you alive. They called in evacs, air strikes and artillery; they kept you and your people together so you forgave the odd sermon here and there. Vicar was, however, taking the piss. The thing was, I was beginning to find his narratives somehow comforting. I was finding myself listening to them to take my mind off Gregor, Rolleston, the Ninja and my failure to look after my people.

‘Who is he?’ I asked. I think I surprised Mudge by taking interest in something besides whisky and brooding.

‘He’s called Vicar,’ Mudge told me. Mudge knew this, I guessed, because he took an interest in his surroundings.

‘Sounds about right. What’s his story?’

‘Apparently he’s Green Slime, attached to GCHQ. Rumour has it that he was part of Operation Spiral,’ Mudge answered. Operation Spiral was a rumour, a joint project between GCHQ and the NSA to hack Their communications infrastructure. Basically it meant sending hackers into an alien net.

‘That was real?’ I asked. I’d always thought that Operation Spiral was a combat myth.

‘That’s what they’re saying,’ Mudge said, shrugging.

‘What’s he saying?’ I asked, meaning about Spiral. I was interested despite myself.

‘That he’s seen the face of the devil. If the rumours are right then everyone either got their frontal lobes burnt or were driven irrevocably insane,’ Mudge answered.

‘He’d be the latter then?’

‘He’d be the sanest,’ Mudge said.

I was actually surprised it took as long to come to a head as it did. We were only two days in. The drink and drugs were probably going to run out tomorrow and then we were looking at a lot of military-issue tranquillisers and cold turkey. That was when things would get really bad.

As far as I could tell, the guy who flipped out was on some kind of evil psychotropic and Vicar’s never-ending monologue had played into the structure of his hallucinations, wrapping him up in a hallucinogenic Christian hellscape. Needless to say the guy wasn‘t too pleased about it.

I could hear the screaming. The tripper’s voice had reached the pitch of the truly fucked-up, making him sound inhuman. Vicar responded by attempting to cast the demons out of him. The tripper had some friends with him, presumably to stop him hurting himself or anyone hurting him. I assumed that this was the end for Vicar. I surprised myself when I realised I was going to miss the noise.

I was more surprised when I found myself getting out of the bunk and climbing down eight storeys of berths. I clambered past squaddies and troopers who were propping themselves up on their elbows, a drunken murder audience. I should’ve been doing the same. Mudge told me later he thought I was trying to get myself killed.

On the cold deck floor I could see what was going on. The tripper was holding Vicar down on a bunk. The guy whose bunk it was had pushed himself up against the partition between his bunk and the one next to it. His eyes were wide open, black lenses like everyone else’s, a voyeur’s smile on his face as he watched the tripper carve Vicar’s flesh. Well it wasn’t like there were any sense booths onboard.

Vicar was covered in blood but in between screams he was still managing to quote scripture, a degree of commitment I can’t really understand.

‘Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer!’ Vicar screamed.

The tripper was naked and covered in blood as well. It looked like he’d been cutting himself as well as Vicar. A naked self-harmer, it was almost a psychotropic cliche. He was holding a jagged peace of metal, though I was pretty sure he had implanted weapons. The hardware implanted in his skull told me the tripper was a signalman like Vicar. Judging by his swimmer’s physique, the webbed fingers and toes, what tattoos I could just about make out through the blood and the gills, he was probably a SEAL. Which meant the two women stood just behind him were SEALs. They outnumbered me and SEALs knew what they were doing. Then again I wasn’t all that sure I knew what I was doing. The tripping SEAL was just sobbing and begging Vicar to shut up. Neither of the women looked happy about what was going on but they were making sure their guy was all right.

‘Let him go,’ I said quietly.

‘I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days!’ Vicar screamed. One of the women, small, compact, tough-looking, wearing combats and a cropped T-shirt, a sweaty bandanna wrapped around her head, changed her position better to see me and so she could move if it got violent.

‘Private matter, mind your own fucking business,’ she said. The forceful-ness in her voice was adopted for the circumstances but you could tell she wasn’t liking this either. I looked at her for a while, her black soulless lenses looked back at me. Vicar screamed as he was made to bleed some more.

I wasn’t sure I could’ve taken both the women even if I was on top of my game, and though I was healing fast I was pretty far from being there. If the psycho joined in I was definitely screwed. Where the fuck was Mudge? Then I realised I hadn’t contacted him. I sub-vocalised a message and spent the time waiting for a reply staring at the SEAL woman.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘What’s it to you?’

‘Mine’s Jakob,’ I said, ignoring her aggressive reply.

‘Look, this is none of your business. Just let him finish and we’re out of here,’ she said.

‘And if it was one of yours?’ I asked.

‘He’s not one of yours,’ she said. She knew that because if he had been we wouldn’t be talking now, I just would’ve attacked them. ‘Besides it’s one on one.’

‘What’s your name?’ I asked again. I guessed the deadness of my tone was beginning to get to her. Vicar screamed out as he was cut some more. If I didn’t do something soon I was going to be wasting my time. Needless to say, since I’d gotten involved more people were beginning to pay attention to what was happening.

‘Reb,’ she finally said.

‘What? Is that short for Rebel?’ I said, smiling. It was a pretty thin, humourless smile.

‘Rebecca,’ she answered. She didn’t sound amused.

‘Well, Rebecca,’ I said. ‘It’s not really one on one, is it? What’re you guys, SEALs?’ I asked. She nodded. ‘And he’s just some deskbound hacker, not even a field op. Not really fair is it?’ I asked.

‘ Neither’s having to listen to twenty-four hours of fire and brimstone,’ she answered. There were a lot of muttered assents from the surrounding crowd.

Vicar didn’t help by taking this moment to scream, ‘Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life!’

‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ the SEAL on the bad trip was screaming, his words running together to become babble. There was more screaming as the SEAL drew on Vicar’s flesh some more.

‘Your man’s hurting,’ I said. ‘This won’t help him.’

‘Kill that noisy fucker!’ a woman screamed from high up on one of the bunks. I looked up to the area where the voice had come from.

‘Shut the fuck up or you’re next!’ I shouted. Reb shifted again, readying herself for violence. Mudge pushed himself through the crowd and nodded to me, making sure that Reb and the other woman knew it was two on two if it came to that. Pub car park politics.

‘You ‘re right. It’s not fair that you have to listen to that twenty-four seven, or hear the guy in the bunk below you chronically abusing himself, or smell two hundred, filthy fucking squaddies shit and sweat. It’s not fair that most of your friends are dead and those that aren‘t are fucked up one way or another, but it’s not his fault and this won’t help,’ I said. I had no idea where this was coming from but I knew I sounded angry. How much worse shall we make today?’ I asked. It was a bad situation for her. She couldn’t be seen to show weakness in case someone decided she was a victim. I also had a feeling she knew what I was talking about. I gave her a way out. After all I didn’t care about me at that moment, let alone some stranger madman.

‘Fuck it.’ I said. ‘You’re right. This is nothing to do with me.’ I turned and started climbing back up towards my bunk. Behind me Reb and the other SEAL woman pulled their signalman off of Vicar and started dragging him back to their ghetto. I opened a comms link to Mudge.

‘Look after Vicar,’ I sub-vocalised.

‘What am I, his fucking nurse?’ Mudge demanded. I closed the link down.

‘God has chosen you as his righteous sword!’ Vicar howled. I screamed and sat bolt upright in my bunk, banging my head on the bunk above me. This was not a good way to wake up. My blades were out, already shredding the cheap sheets on my bunk. I guessed he’d only gotten so close because I’d finished most of my rum ration and the rest of the whisky I’d taken from the guy I killed. I mean the guy I’d murdered.

‘Get. The fuck. Off my bunk!’ I managed. Vicar reached for me. He smelt of halitosis, sour sweat, piss and shit. In retrospect the smell must’ve been his defence mechanism, a way to stop him getting killed by anyone who wasn’t deeply fucked on drugs.

‘Listen! You must listen. You will be called and you must answer!’ He seemed to loom over me. his insane features somehow huge in the cramped space of my bunk. I realised that I was actually frightened of this guy. People were beginning to shout at us to be quiet.

‘Get away from me!’ I shouted.

‘Do you guys want to be alone?’ I heard an amused, if tired-sounding Mudge ask from the bunk below. Something was nagging me at the back of my skull. Something had been changed or was different. Something was bothering me beyond having a smelly religious fanatic trying to crawl into my bunk.

‘When the time has come for the second-’

‘Shut up!’ I snapped, every bit the sergeant now. Something in my voice made Vicar be quiet.

‘Thank Christ for that,’ Mudge muttered.

‘You take the Lord’s name in-’ Vicar began.

‘Shut up!’ I shouted again. I realised what was wrong.

‘Mudge, when did they strike the sails?’ I asked. The harmonics of the background noise were all wrong. The feeling that you got at some instinctive level that you were moving at ridiculous speeds was missing. We were only three days into an eight-day journey and we’d dropped out of FTL.

‘Get off my bunk,’ I said to Vicar. Something in my voice made him move.

I leant over, ignoring the vertigo of the forty or so foot drop to the deck, and looked down at Mudge. There was some young pretty-looking squaddie in his bunk with him but Mudge was awake and alert, the camera lenses in his eyes moving slightly as he focused on me.

‘On you go, son,’ I said not unkindly to the boy with Mudge. He clambered out of the bunk.

‘I guess while we were sleeping,’ Mudge said watching the naked squaddie clamber down the bunks. ‘Do you think there’s a problem?’

‘Must be if we’ve stopped,’ I said, dragging on my combats and a T-shirt and starting to lace up my boots.

‘The sail?’ he asked.

‘How the fuck would I know?’

‘Well, is there any need for you to throw my entertainment out of bed after waking me up?’ he demanded.

‘I didn’t wake you up,’ I pointed out. Around the modular hold others were beginning to realise that something was going on. Word spread quickly that we’d dropped out of FTL. I opened a comms link to the Santa Maria requesting information but got no reply. Neither did anyone else, it seemed. I linked to the MPs locked into their armoured cubicle but they were none the wiser.

I clambered down out of my bunk, Mudge with me. Vicar was standing at the bottom of our column of bunks.

‘I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false! You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary! Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first!’ From the surrounding bunks there was the occasional demand for quiet accompanied by a threat but most people had got used to him now.

‘What’s he talking about?’ Mudge asked me.

‘Falling out of bed,’ I said. People were beginning to congregate by the airlock that connected the modular hold to the rest of the Santa Maria. Mudge and I pushed our way through the crowd to the airlock, Mudge nodding to the acquaintances he’d made in his wanderings.

Reb, the woman who‘d been with her the previous day and their signalman were all standing by the airlock. Fortunately the tripper was clothed this time. His self-inflicted cuts were scabbing over and he was tranced in. Reb nodded at me, looking uncomfortable. I didn’t waste time asking stupid questions. We just waited until the signalman was finished.

The SEAL signalman came out of his trance and began shaking his head.

‘Well?’ Mudge asked. The SEAL glanced at the pair of us without recognition and then looked up at Reb.

‘They haven’t just locked us out. I went straight through the security on the lock, and as far as I can tell they’ve trashed the actual lock mechanism itself.’

‘Can you get into the ship’s systems?’ Reb asked.

He shook his head. ‘Nope, they’ve got a complete comms blackout running. Everything is shut down.’

‘What about tricking them out and coming through the sensor array?’ a surprisingly sane-sounding Vicar asked.

There was a moment where everyone stared at him, especially the signalman who’d been cutting him the day before. ‘Tried it. I think they’ve shut down the sensor array,’ he said, recovering.

‘Piggybacking onto the internal viz or intercom?’ Vicar asked. The signalman was starting to look a bit pissed off now.

‘Look, I know what I’m doing. Without a decent transmitter I don’t have enough power in here,’ he said tapping his head, ‘to break into low-power systems like that.’

‘These are the words of him who is holy and true. I hold the key of David. What I open no one can shut, and what I shut no one can open. This has been given to me by God.’ There were a lot of groans as Vicar returned to form and then he collapsed, which to give him credit was quite melodramatic, as he tranced in. People pushed others out of the way to avoid Vicar falling into them and he hit the floor quite hard. Then everyone’s attention turned back to the SEALs by the airlock.

‘What do you think?’ I asked Mudge.

‘Well, they’ve stopped and locked us in for a reason,’ Mudge said. ‘I can’t think it’ll be anything good.’ In retrospect it was kind of obvious what they were intending to do. I think we knew at some level but were refusing to admit it to ourselves, though this wasn’t a problem for Vicar.

‘They intend to override the external airlock doors and space all here,’ Vicar said as he exited his trance.

‘What’ve you got in your head?’ the SEAL signalman asked.

Vicar ignored him. He gave time for denial mixed with assertions of his fragile mental health to run its course through the assembled soldiers.

‘You sure?’ I asked him. He nodded. It was enough for me.

‘Why?’ the other SEAL women asked.

‘There are too many here who know truths. The red horseman who is war and the devil who is lies are enemies of the righteous,’ Vicar said. It worried me that this made sense.

‘Rolleston?’ Mudge asked. I shrugged. People had overheard the question.

‘This is your fault?’ someone asked. I recognised him. He was Regiment and so were his friends.

‘Yeah turn on us, that’ll help,’ Mudge said.

‘It is my fault as well,’ Vicar said. ‘Though you deny me I have seen the face of the devil and God. I understood Their sacred geometry. I know the idolatrous cathedral of Their information architecture, a tool for evil to test humanity. It is the fruit on the tree, it is knowledge and will damn all.’

The worrying thing is I was beginning to wonder what if all the mad people weren’t mad. What if they just knew stuff?

‘Shut the fuck up, madman,’ someone in the crowd yelled.

‘You’re not listening, are you?’ the SEAL signalman said. ‘They want him dead because he knows things.’

Vicar nodded at the SEAL’s words.

‘So we offer you up; maybe they’ll let us live,’ the Regiment guy said. So much for regimental loyalty, I thought.

‘Yeah, that’ll work,’ Mudge said.

‘Worth a try,’ the guy said evenly. Here we go again.

‘Don’t be so fucking naive,’ Reb snapped. ‘People out there want to kill us and you want to start a fight in here?’

‘Yeah, if it gets us out of here,’ my fellow trooper replied.

‘The soldiers of Christ are a danger. We all know too much and we all fight with too much righteous fury. We are like a heavenly host: our burning swords will not become ploughshares,’ Vicar said, before turning to the SEAL signalman who‘d been drawing on his flesh with a shank only hours before. ‘They will have to send a signal to open the gates to the void. We will meet them in heaven with swords in our hand,’ he said, a fanatic’s glint in his eye. The SEAL seemed to give this some thought.

‘They’ll have thought of that. If the worst comes to the worst they can either blow open the doors or just jettison the whole module and let the life support run out.’

‘They’ve shut down the life support!’ someone shouted from the rear of the crowd. That would explain why my internal systems were assisting with breathing and it was suddenly getting very cold in here.

‘The best we can hope for is to delay them for a while,’ the signalman said.

‘We need to get through this airlock,’ Reb said, patting the airlock door for emphasis.

‘The only way through from this side would be to cut it or blow it; the mechanism’s fucked,’ the signalman said. We wasted some time making sure we didn’t have any explosives or cutting torches.

‘From this side?’ Vicar asked.

‘There’s a manual pump to open it on the ship side,’ the signalman said.

‘And I hold the keys of death and Hades,’ Vicar said. ‘One must cross over,’ he said. Everyone was staring at him now.

‘See if you can explain what you mean without pissing everyone else off with this religious bullshit,’ Reb said to him. Instead of answering he reached down the back of his soiled combat trousers and began ferreting around.

‘Have you got your hand up your arse?’ Mudge demanded incredulously.

‘You jealous?’ Reb asked, grinning, and definitely scoring points with me. With a grunt Vicar removed his hand from his combats.

‘You enjoy that?’ Mudge asked. Triumphantly Vicar presented us with a brown fist, which he opened to display a shit-covered piece of technology.

‘What is it?’ Reb asked.

‘It’s a lock burner,’ I said with a sinking feeling. Vicar tried to hand it to me but I recoiled from him. ‘Why the fuck are you giving it to me?’ I demanded, though I knew the answer.

‘He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death,’ Vicar said.

‘Do you always carry a lock burner in your arse?’ Mudge asked.

Suddenly there were a lot of people looking at me expectantly. Thanks for singling me out.’ I said.

‘We’re going to die in vacuum anyway.’ Mudge said.

‘You want to do it?’ I asked.

Fuck no. I’m not a rory tory combat soldier.’ Mudge said. I glared at him.

‘We don t haw much time.’ the SEAL signalman said.

‘Well then, you go and fucking do it.’ I said. I really did not want to and I didn’t understand why I was the one picked out. There were lots of special forces types here. It seemed that because Vicar had presented me with the lock burner everyone had decided I was the one.

‘Because you are the righteous-’ Vicar began. My blades slid out almost of their own volition, it seemed.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ I spat at him. ‘One more religious piece of shit out of you and I swear you’ll meet your God right now.’

He stared into my black lenses. Suddenly there was no madness in those wild eyes. ‘I don’t believe in God,’ he said in careful and even tones. We seemed to spend a long time staring at each other, coming to some kind of unspoken agreement that I’m still not sure I fully understand.

‘Can you hack the external airlock?’ I asked. Vicar nodded. ‘Shit! Fuck!’ I shouted. I was really scared. ‘I’ll still have to fight my way to the other side of that door,’ I said, pointing at the internal airlock that led to the Santa Maria. Nobody said anything. ‘Does anybody even know where the Santa Maria’s external airlock is?’ I said. I saw that there was a text-file icon flashing on my internal visual display; it was from Vicar. I opened it, seeing a schematic for the Santa Maria with the external airlock highlighted. ‘If I manage to get the door open you can’t just kill everyone,’ I said to the pissed-off assembled squaddies around me.

‘If you get that door open just leave the rest to us,’ Reb said. I took one last look around, swore again and made my way towards the external airlock. I heard a soft thump as Vicar fell to the ground as he tranced in again.

I grabbed a fire extinguisher from its bracket on the wall as I strode past it. I saw the door to the external airlock slide open.

Augmented humans can last very briefly in vacuum. I had a small internal oxygen supply, a reinforced superstructure and internal systems that could, to a degree, cope with the bends. It was still the worst thirty seconds of my life. I can’t do it justice: the cold was so cold it burnt. My joints were agony. I used the spray from the fire extinguisher as propulsion. I don’t know how I managed to hold on and clamber up the Santa Maria. At one point I caught a glimpse of the stars. Against the curvature of the hull I seemed to be at an odd angle. For a moment there was peace and beauty. I was pretty sure I’d died.

I have no idea how I got to the airlock or how I managed to work the shit-stained lock burner. They found me sobbing, gasping and laughing hysterically on the floor of the airlock. Months later I’d see the footage at my court martial. I didn’t recognise myself. It was like a devil had been put in flesh that vaguely resembled mine.

My blades found their way into the stomachs of the two MPs. On the footage I watched this monster that looked like me get shot, get shot a lot, as he walked through the Santa Maria, killing everyone he found. I had been shouting one name over and over again. Rolleston. It wasn’t confirmed until the trial that Rolleston had given the order, but somehow I’d known and I’d been looking for him, but he wasn’t on board. It was a grinning blood-covered corpse that opened the internal airlock door to the cargo bay and collapsed.

Back home there were sirens for our welcome. We‘d talked about running but we had nowhere to run. Mudge had convinced us it would be okay. He’d broadcast the story as soon as we’d entered the Sol system. We were arrested when we docked at High Nyota Mlima but by then public opinion was with us and Mudge had arranged a lawyer for me through some media contact.

The riot on the Santa Maria that followed our escape from the hold wasn’t much better than my rampage. We were all dishonourably discharged but no further action was taken. We could’ve been shot for mutiny. We were in the wrong because there was no law or military regulation that said we couldn’t all be ejected into space. There is now. Mudge made sure, despite the Official Secrets Act, that Rolleston was disgraced. Though in the end that just seemed to drive him further into the black spectrum of covert ops.

When I met Vicar again in Dundee he was saner, but the one thing I remember more than any other thing about the trial was him – wild-eyed, drool dripping off his unkempt bushy black beard, screaming at Rolleston. It was the same thing over and over again. ‘I know where you live – where Satan has his throne!’