Veteran

31

I was up and walking. I didn’t feel ill – the drugs were hiding the sickness from me – I felt dissociated. It was nice, but had I felt less dissociated I would’ve been worried about feeling this way just before going into combat. On the other hand, what was there to worry about? I was dead anyway and so was everyone else. I had on my inertial undersuit and was carrying my pistols, more for comfort than anything else. If the Mamluk got breached it was all over. I was making my way towards the converted bomb bay.

Gibby had us running silent and deep, hanging back several hundred miles from the Dog’s Teeth, the huge asteroid belt almost halfway between Sirius A and B. It was theorised that the belt may have once been a planet that was crushed by the gravitational forces of the two stars back when Sirius B was in main sequence and the larger of the two. Gibby was sending us feed from the ship’s external lenses of the neighbourhood. The Dog’s Teeth was a mass of huge static-looking asteroids, many of them the size of small planetoids. Increasing magnification, I could see the organic material forming a connecting web between some of the asteroids. Increasing magnification further, I could see some of Their larger ships. The pale-blue light of Sirius B filtering through the belt illuminated the scene.

I entered Pagan’s cabin. He had stuck a liquid crystal thinscreen to the wall and was running some sophisticated image analysis programs trying to find a quiet place for us to insert. The hacker looked up at me as I entered, his dreadlocks swinging round as he did so. He had seemed old but vital to me when we’d met on the Avenues; now he looked tired and haggard – his age had truly caught up with him.

‘What’ve you got?’ I asked.

‘I’ve picked one route that seems as good as any with two backups, but without active scans I’m pretty much blind. I could be flying us into a death trap.’

I started laughing. ‘If I was you, I’d take that as a given.’

Pagan didn’t seem to find that at all funny. ‘I’m sending the coordinates to everyone now,’ he said, and I saw a message icon appear on my internal visual display. I’d download the information to the Mamluk’s navigation systems when I interfaced with it later.

‘You all right?’ I asked. Stupid question, I know, but it seemed that Pagan had something that he wanted to say.

‘This is bullshit, this whole thing. You know that, right? I mean this is all speculation. We’re running on nothing but Gregor’s say-so and Morag’s blind optimism, and Gregor hasn’t even hatched. We’ve got fuck all to go on and nothing to corroborate what he says.’

‘Where’s your faith?’ I asked, smiling.

Pagan swung round again to glare at me with his black lenses. ‘That’s not funny. Do you trust him? I mean the guy’s in a cocoon!’ He was trying to keep his voice down.

‘Yeah, I trust him,’ I said, not entirely sure I did. Gregor was so alien, so different to the guy who’d often saved my life. ‘What did God say?’ I asked.

Pagan muttered something under his breath and shook his head. God had been pretty low-key through most of our trip, something to do with limited processing power, but he was there in the ship’s systems.

‘What?’

‘God thinks that Gregor’s story is the most probable plan of action for the Cabal based on the information we have to hand,’ he said.

‘Well if God-’ I started.

‘God can be wrong,’ Pagan said flatly.

‘Heresy,’ I said, trying to hide a smile. ‘Your own creation as well.’

‘Why am I talking to you? He’s your best friend and she’s your lover.’

‘I’m not blind to what’s going on. I know this is pretty thin, but I’ve got nothing to lose. If you don’t want to go, don’t go,’ I said.

His head whipped up to glare at me. ‘I’m not going to leave you all in the lurch. I couldn’t live with myself. Besides, it looks like you need a hacker,’ he said, his voice tailing off bitterly.

‘Morag can do it,’ I said.

‘She’ll be too busy communing with the gods or walking on water or whatever,’ he said, not even trying to disguise the bitterness in his voice. Morag’s talent had so far outstripped his skills and years of experience; he felt redundant. I could identify with that.

Pagan had gone back to studying the images of the Teeth. I turned to leave. As I reached the door to his cabin I turned back to him.

‘I don’t want you to die, but I’m glad to have you with us.’

He looked up and seemed like he was about to say something but thought better of it and nodded.

I said, ‘Morag’s good at what she does, very good, and she’s smart, strong, funny and beautiful, and people are drawn to that. Attention may be focused on her at the moment because of those reasons, but we haven’t forgotten who did this, who made this happen, who created God and gave us another chance, even if we might not see the end result.’ I said. We had one of those awkward silences then, the sort of silence that accompanies men trying to be either nice or honest to each other.

Finally he nodded. ‘I’ll see you out there,’ he said.

‘He’s coming,’ Morag announced. The Spear had only been hanging in the sky in the middle of Themspace for two hours now. We were waiting in the converted bomb bay leaning on our mechs, getting more and more pissed off.

‘You sure?’ I asked. I don’t know why I asked; he’d sent all of us the message that he was about ready to hatch. Morag just gave me the look that all young people do, the one that told you just how stupid you were.

I’d got used to the dissociation of the drugs and was feeling quite good. Of course I’d bypassed the medical readout on my internal visual display; all those warning symbols just made for depressing reading.

‘Let’s mount up,’ I said. If he didn’t hatch soon I was going to call the thing off.

Because of the way the Mamluks were stacked, on converted long-range missile racks, we had a very little space to crawl into them. Not a problem for the Dog Soldier, which was free-standing but crouched down, which presented its own set of problems for Balor.

I was struggling to get my limbs into their respective control slippers and gloves when we heard the crack! It seemed to echo through the ship. Everyone stopped what they were doing. There then followed an unpleasant organic ripping sound and a clanging noise. Everyone was exchanging questioning looks. The pissed-off feeling at waiting for Gregor to emerge was replaced with anticipation tinged with fear. The clanging was now rhythmic as something large approached us. The big door between the engine room and the bomb bay slid open.

Several of us panicked, myself included. Well not exactly panicked but acted on instinct. Despite the fact that we were racked and none of us properly interfaced to the Mamluks, Mudge, Pagan and I all tried to move the mechs to bring our weapons to bear. I’m not sure whether I thought we’d been compromised and They’d boarded us or it was just some fearful animal response to seeing something that alien. Of course none of us could move the Mamluks yet so there was a moment of clanging, straining and cursing before we all calmed down.

It wasn’t just that it was weird, though it – he – was. It was disturbing that Gregor’s once-human physiology could be transformed into this. The metal and plastic that filled our bodies aside, Gregor’s strange form left me worried about the sanctity of humanity. It seemed that not even that was a constant any more.

‘That’s fucked up,’ Balor said, perhaps hypocritically.

It was made of the smooth, oily black flesh from which all of Them were formed. The flesh formed panels of solid-looking chitinous armour plate. It – he, I had to remember that this was my friend – stood about sixteen feet tall and shared characteristics with their Walkers. He had long and deceptively spindly legs with backward-facing joints. His upper body was thickset and powerful but not out of proportion. Powerful, long, multi-jointed arms ended in six-fingered hands. Each of the long fingers was tipped with a claw that looked capable of tearing through mech armour. His head was almost triangular; the only feature a sort of lattice-like pattern that I assumed were sensors. On either shoulder were honeycomb-like protrusions that formed a kind of collar around the head but did not restrict its movement. It took me a while to realise these were organically grown rocket or missile launchers. On several parts of his body small nozzles mounted on gristly ball-shaped growths seemed to move independently. Again it took me a moment to realise this was a black-light, anti-missile defence system. On his back another larger honeycomb growth glowed with the faint blue light of a Themtech propulsion system. The pale light reminded me of Sirius B. There were other similar but smaller growths on various other parts of his body, all of them glowing with the same pale blue light, presumably for manoeuvring control.

In his massive hands he held a disturbingly organic-looking weapon, a tendril-like power cable connecting the weapon to his main body like an umbilical cord. The weapon had an over and under barrel. I guessed it was a shard cannon combined with a black-light projector. A chain of what looked like black bone ran from the weapon to a hump-like growth on Gregor’s lower back. This was ammunition for the shard cannon. The hump was either ammunition storage or possibly, depending on available energy, even a little biological ammunition factory, I wasn’t sure which.

By far and away the worst thing for me were the tentacles. People shouldn’t have tentacles. They were long and sinuously writhed behind him, backlit by a glow from the engine room. They were thick and powerful, and covered in small scales of chitin that didn’t seem to restrict their movement.

Morag glanced over at me, but I really didn’t have any reassurance for her. Pagan was staring at me pointedly. I ignored him. Morag let out an involuntary scream. I turned back to Gregor and let out my own involuntary cry of surprise. Gregor’s triangular head was splitting in half, pulling itself apart. There were tendrils of slime suspended between the two halves. Inside, nestled among alien gristle, was Gregor’s human head. Somehow it reminded me of a pearl in an opened oyster. The familiar face made it all the more freakish and difficult to deal with. I guessed he’d kept his human head and face to try and cling on to the last vestiges of his humanity but it just made him more alien. Maybe Balor wasn’t being such a hypocrite, I decided. The sad thing was Gregor didn’t really look all that much like one of Them either.

‘It’s still me,’ he said, but his voice sounded odd, slightly modulated.

‘The fact that you have to say that…’ Mudge began, but a look from me silenced him. Nobody else really had anything to say. Gregor looked like he was in pain; he looked like he was going to cry. That was when I realised that his eyes were human again, the cybernetic lenses gone. I zoomed in on his eyes with my own lenses. They were brown. I wanted to ask him what he’d done to himself? Was anything worth this?

‘Let’s get this over and done with,’ I said instead. I needed to force my feelings down, beneath the training, the discipline and Mudge’s drugs.

‘We’re still going ahead with this then?’ Pagan asked, contacting me through a private channel on the tac net rather than asking out loud.

‘This changes nothing,’ I replied to him brusquely and then out loud to the rest of them. ‘Right, you know the drill, run silent, no unnecessary systems, just like the dive. Comms silence unless we’re compromised-’

‘When we’re compromised,’ Pagan corrected me.

‘Until then use sign language only. Gregor-’ I glanced over to the alien form hulking over us all ‘-is going to tow us into the Teeth, because he should be scanning as one of them.’ He nodded. ‘Once in, we use the compressed-air system on the fins to manoeuvre. Do not use your primary system unless we’re compromised.’

‘And then what?’ Pagan asked, though he knew damn well.

‘We find the pod, disable it, use it to send a signal to the other pods and extract back to the ship,’ I said. It sounded so easy.

‘You mean, if we get to the pod we hold Them off as long as possible until we’re eventually overrun,’ Pagan said.

‘That is more likely,’ Gregor said. Even through the modulation I could hear the pain in his voice.

‘Pagan, either stay behind or shut up,’ I said. I didn’t have time for this. ‘Gibby is going to hold here for twelve hours. If we’re not back by then he’s out of here. If he gets compromised he will attempt E amp;E, set sail to put some distance between the Spear and Them, and then meet us at our secondary or tertiary RV points.’

‘And we still don’t know what we’re looking for?’ Mudge asked. I glared at him. ‘I’m just asking.’

‘We know it’s a pod, we have coordinates for it, and we know it will be a human application of Themtech,’ Gregor said.

‘Anything else?’ I asked.

‘Morag?’ Pagan said.

I tried to force down the pain, ignore it and busy myself with other things. Tried not to think that this would be the last time I saw her. I couldn’t help but glance over at Morag as she struggled to get into the Mamluk. She looked like a pale and frightened little girl. I felt I was sending her to her death, though in reality I was doing that to everyone.

‘Morag’s going to be doing her own thing,’ I said.

‘I’ll split with you when we reach the Teeth.’ She sounded both scared and strangely sure of herself.

I looked over at Rannu, expecting an objection from him, insistence that he accompanied her, but he said nothing. I think I was jealous of his confidence in her, his faith? Enough thinking. I finally managed to wriggle into the control slippers and gloves. I was lying down on the padding as the four interface plugs slipped into the ports on the back of my neck. Information from the Mamluk’s systems appeared on my internal visual display. The front panel slid shut over me as the head lowered and clicked into place. I didn’t get the rush and feeling of power I had in the Wraith over the Atlantic. This time I felt like I’d been locked into a cell only slightly bigger than my own body. Still I’d decided to take Mudge’s advice. A mournful-sounding saxophone started up, music piped directly into my ears, as I shut down all nonessential systems on my mech.

The bomb bay was effectively a large airlock. The internal door closed and locked and the bomb bay depressurised before the two enormous external doors opened. Craning the Mamluk’s neck, I could see blackness punctuated with pinpricks of starlight below me. We seemed to tumble out. We had to get out quickly because the Spear was zipped up, everything retracted to present the smallest possible scanner signature, and the open doors disrupted that.

I was free-floating now just beneath – or above, depending on your perspective – the Spear. Gregor was last out. A tentacle snaked out of the darkness of the bomb bay and gripped the edge of the hatch, then another joined it and another. Others whipped out, reaching for us as Gregor pulled himself out of the spacecraft. We all knew he was going to be towing us but even so I flinched as a tentacle wrapped around the midriff of my mech. The pale-blue light of his propulsion system seemed to burn slightly brighter as we moved away from the relative safety of the ship towards the Teeth. Even though I knew both the mech and my inertial undersuit were heated, I felt cold. I tried to tell myself it was just the psychology of EVA.

First it seemed to take for ever – the Teeth never seemed to be getting closer – and then all of a sudden we were there and they filled our vision. Much of the Teeth was uninhabited but the coordinates we were heading for were densely populated by Them. Fear and awe warred within me. The larger asteroids were in pretty static orbits, despite the binary nature of the star system. However the aliens had joined many of them together, strands and structures of what I guess were the aliens themselves ran between the huge rocks. It wasn’t like human construction – no inelegant metal or concrete scarring the rocks. They weren’t even structures; there were no delineated roles for the growths. They were habitats and production centres and defences all in one. They were alive, growing, taking raw materials from the rock and energy from their pale stars. If anything these growths were Them; what we saw on Dog 4 and on the other battlefields in the colonies were just Their weapons. I tried to think of a comparison, something to help me understand Them as we approached the Teeth. They were like a latticework of coral suspended between huge floating mountains.

Because of our relative spatial perceptions, although we were approaching it seemed like we were staying still and the Teeth were getting bigger and bigger. The closer we got the easier it was to make out the cordon of ships from Their fleet. We could even see new ones growing out of the alien matter. In the alien coral I began to make out the energy matrices and cancerous-looking growths of various weapon systems. Closer still and I could make out smaller craft, Their equivalent of long-range raiders and fighters, then EVA-equipped Walkers and finally what we’d always thought of as Them, the Berserks, though they were really just another weapon system.

There were other humanoid Them-forms here. Ones we’d never seen before, which presumably performed some niche task in their space-going ecology.

This was insane. There were so many of Them crawling like termites over Their complex structures. Why couldn’t They see us? Of course we were tiny little specks against a backdrop of infinity, using some very sophisticated stealth technology and prayers not to get noticed. Also if humanity had never tried a penetration this foolish before, and I wasn’t aware we had, then They wouldn’t have learnt to look for something like this.

Several of the manoeuvring mechanisms on Gregor’s battle form glowed brighter as he changed position. He angled towards a sparsely populated gap between several of the rocks, though I could see lattice growths on them that suggested sensors. We trailed behind him, a tentacle wrapped around each of us, two around Balor’s Dog Soldier mech. It reminded me of a spider’s web with multiple flies caught in it.

Vertigo threatened to overtake me, breaking through the narcotic haze of Mudge’s drugs, as we flew silently into the gap between three of the huge asteroids. I was having problems coping with the sheer scale of the landscape. Above and beneath us I could see Them moving through space, Their propulsion systems glowing pale blue as well. Many of Their forms were unrecognisable to me, serving purposes I could only guess at. To my left I saw something that looked insectile crawl across Them-growth, picking at it with mandibles and manipulators, presumably some kind of maintenance creature. It ignored us as we floated past, the music going a long way towards helping keep me calm.

As we rounded one of the bigger asteroids that formed the outer perimeter, the light that emanated from deeper within the Teeth almost acted like a sunrise effect. In the distance I could make out spires reminiscent of the vision that Ambassador had given me as I’d slept next to Morag. Except these spires weren’t multi-hued, they were black, pale bioluminescence providing illumination. The spires grew out of four huge planetoid-sized asteroids, all of them pointing inwards like a jagged maw. Thick strands of the coral material formed a web connecting the four asteroids. Between the spires huge tentacles moved, performing tasks I could only guess at. It was beautiful and sinister, and the more I thought about it the more I was sure that it was so far removed from me that I didn’t belong here.

Gregor took us in close to a smaller asteroid with no visible growth on it. Tiny molecular hooks mounted on pads adhered to the Mamluks’ fingers and feet attached us to the rock as Gregor’s tentacles slid off us. We formed a quick and impromptu defensive perimeter. I superimposed the coordinates that Gregor had provided over the view in front of me. The pod was hopefully just on the outskirts of the maw-like city. The area was crawling with Them.

Without doing an active scan that would have given away our position I reckoned that our destination was about twelve miles way. I plotted the course I would have chosen, the path of least resistance, as a matter of course, my training kicking in. As it was, it was Gregor’s call. Using hand signals the huge hybrid pointed out the course he wanted to take, which initially seemed to agree with mine, and then indicated that he wanted to head off. We all signalled the affirmative and Gregor pushed himself off the rock.

We flew in an arrowhead formation, tight as possible to keep within the biometric pattern that Gregor was transmitting. Gregor was point, Morag and Rannu flanked him, Pagan and Mudge flanked them and I flanked Pagan. Balor flew in the centre of the V providing our rearguard. We stayed as close to the rocks as we could and tried to avoid any of Their growth.

Moving was a matter of firing a blast of compressed air from the propulsion fin to send you in the direction you wanted to go, and then making any adjustments to your course with smaller blasts of compressed air. We, or rather I, and I’m assuming it was the same for the other members of the team, experienced more than one moment of pant-shitting terror as we came round a blind corner to find Them-growth or worse some Them-form only to have it seemingly ignore us. This was either because of the biometric pattern that Gregor was transmitting or because we were superfluous to its duties. Despite this and the general constant high stress level, the main problem was a struggle to stay alert because of the slowness of our movement. Going from one piece of cover to the next was boring, except when we had to cross large areas of open space. That got exciting largely because you didn’t know if you were going to get seared open by black light at any given moment. We were really penetrating Themspace; I couldn’t believe we were really doing this. I needed a cigarette and a drink.

We formed a rough circle in an indent on a smallish, tethered asteroid close enough to Maw City, as I’d come to think of the nearby habitat, to be bathed in its ambient light. I felt a thrill of success at getting this close. We truly were sneaky bastards! We were looking up at another rock face about a hundred and fifty feet away from us. I felt one of the other mechs touch my Mamluk’s arm. I moved my mech’s head to take in the image of Morag signalling that she was leaving. I signalled a negative for no good reason. I didn’t want her to leave. It was too soon and I was still alive, but she signalled an affirmative. I signalled her to wait and reached out. Signals from the Mamluk’s armoured skin told me my mech had touched hers. Gas escaped from her propulsion fin and I watched as her mech gracefully, or so it seemed to me, took off into the void.

We stayed where we were, giving Morag time to get clear. Now beads of sweat were beginning to appear on my skin as each second passed without my mech’s passive scanner picking up weapons fire. Each second that Morag didn’t transmit to say she was in trouble meant that I knew she was still alive.

There was another tap on my arm. I turned to see Mudge’s mech gesturing towards the lip of the small crater in which we were hiding. I could just make out the irregular silhouette of a Walker beyond the lip on the surface of the asteroid. I turned back to Mudge. Beyond his mech I could see the Dog Soldier disappearing into a cavern entrance in the asteroid. I couldn’t see Gregor so presumably he was in the cave as well. The rest of them were crawling in what looked like slow motion towards the cave entrance. Mudge was doing the same and I followed.

Last into the cave, I ended up acting as picket. It was huge. I looked past the rest of them as they moved deeper into the cathedral-sized cavern. I could see another exit about a kilometre away from my position. Between here and there huge pillars of rock joined the ceiling to the floor. I was lying on a smooth slope next to a wall about twenty yards away from the cave entrance and was trying to make myself as small a target as possible, hoping that the stealth and camouflage systems of the Mamluk would protect me. About fifty yards behind me Balor was acting as fire support, covering my position, crouched down near to one of the pillars.

Although facing the cavern mouth, the Mamluk’s systems were providing me with a full three-sixty view on my internal visual display. I saw Gregor organising the others by hand signal to patrol into the cavern. He signalled to Pagan to join them, but Pagan signalled negative. Gregor signalled for Pagan to join him again, and again received a refusal. This was pissing me off. As if we weren’t in a tight enough situation, Pagan was choosing now to be insubordinate. Pagan moved behind the pillar next to Balor and out of my view. Even in his alien form I could tell Gregor was annoyed. Shaking his triangular head in an oddly human gesture, Gregor led Rannu and Mudge deeper into the cavern, walking in a staggered line.

There was nothing at the cave entrance. I was hoping that the Walker hadn’t seen us. There was certainly nothing to suggest we’d been caught in an active scan. That didn’t, however, mean we hadn’t been picked up on a passive scan. The bioluminescence of Maw City and the other Them-growth nearby lit up the cave mouth but threw the area where I was lying into shadow. I wished we’d brought vacuum-capable crawler cams or mites with us so I could check out what was going on on the surface of the asteroid, but any transmissions from devices like that would’ve been picked up.

Behind me, Gregor, Rannu and Mudge had stopped their advance towards the other entrance. Gregor and Rannu were providing security while Mudge looked at something. I split-screened my visual display and had the Mamluk zoom in on Mudge’s area. All through the rear part of the cavern alien growth coated the rock walls.

‘Shit,’ I muttered quietly. The soft jazz wasn’t doing quite such a good job of keeping me calm now. I watched as the growth began to move, crawl together and form the sort of lattice pattern I’d come to connect with Them sensor systems. That was it. We were compromised. It was all over bar the shooting now. I signalled to Balor that we were compromised and pointed to Mudge’s position. The hive-mind nature of Them meant that if a cell in here knew, then all of them in the Dog’s Teeth knew.

I barely had time to register the silhouette of the Walker backlit by the bioluminescence of Maw City before it exploded, its flesh floating away in the vacuum. It had been hit by one of the massive 105-millimetre shells from Balor’s mass driver. Its legs were still stuck to the cave-mouth rock by their tiny molecular hooks.

Then of course there were more of Them. My acquisition software promised me a target-rich environment as Berserks swarmed into the cave mouth. We activated the rest of our Mamluk systems, my internal visual display now receiving feed from all the other mechs bar Gregor’s organic one. I fired, shifted target, fired another burst and moved to the next target as 20-millimetre rounds from my railgun tore Them apart.

Rounds from Balor’s 30-millimetre railgun flew over my head as he provided longer bursts, trying to deny the Berserks the cave entrance, but there were too many of Them. Every time a Walker stalked into view Balor would fire his mass driver and the alien mech would silently explode. Despite our firepower They were creeping towards us. Their returning fire was light but getting heavier as black light scarred the rocks near me and shards rained down on my armour.

Glancing at the feeds from Rannu and Mudge, I could see that they and Gregor had taken to the air. The Mamluks were using the jet systems on their propulsion fins, all attempts at stealth pointless now. Rannu and Mudge laid down fire in long bursts from their railguns and Gregor did the same with his shard cannon as Berserks flooded the other cavern entrance. I watched blue contrails of energy as Gregor launched three missiles from his right shoulder launcher at the other cave mouth. They exploded in a line, blasting the Berserks and two Walkers back out into space. This gave the three of them enough time to get into position, using the columns of rock that ran from ceiling to roof as cover. They continued firing at the cave entrance, trying to deny the area to Them.

There were more blue contrails in the vacuum, this time coming towards me. Laser fire filled my field of vision, momentarily illuminating the cave in a hellish red light as the Dog Soldier’s anti-missile defences went to work. The incoming missile exploded in mid-flight. I felt the blast push me further down the slope, scraping the Mamluk’s armour against the rock surface, but I kept on firing, and they kept on creeping closer. I was taking multiple hits now, but so far it was all small-arms stuff. I was in trouble if a Walker targeted me, and I knew if the Berserks could swarm me then they would tear the Mamluk apart with their claws because I’d seen it happen to bigger mechs than mine. Basically that was what They were going to do – overrun us through sheer force of numbers.

‘Jakob, pull back,’ Balor said. I didn’t question, just sent the signal to the hook pads to release me from the rock, kicked off slightly and fired the jets on the propulsion fin forward so I shot backwards. I flew just above the rock floor, firing as I retreated. I watched as two rockets from the Dog Soldier’s shoulder batteries flew overhead and exploded in a dense concentration of Them, buying us a few more seconds while more charged in. Maybe we would even live long enough to run out of ammunition, I thought optimistically. The good news was that due to the proximity of the other asteroid They probably couldn’t manoeuvre anything really big in here to have a go at us.

I hunkered down behind a rock ledge on one knee and continued firing. The vacuum around the cave entrance was full of floating Berserk body parts and streams of black liquid. They were literally coming apart through the sheer force of the rounds we were hitting Them with, and the mass driver was taking care of any armour They managed to get into the cave mouth. Even so, They were slowly creeping towards us. I realised we were missing a gun. I checked the split screens. I could not believe it. Pagan was just hunkered down behind the column.

‘Pagan! What the fuck are you doing!’ I screamed over our tac net.

There was no reply. We continued firing. At the other end of the cavern Rannu, Mudge and Gregor’s position was only slightly better.

‘Pagan, get in this fight!’ I screamed again. The mass of Berserks seemed closer now. Another Walker exploded but there was another behind it. The rock wall exploded near the second Walker as a round from Balor’s mass driver gouged a huge rent out of it, spraying the advancing aliens with fragments of rock. The rock ledge I was hiding behind exploded, and something like a sledgehammer hit me in the chest. I felt armour buckle and blood fill my mouth but the Mamluk’s structural integrity held.

The Berserks were running towards me on the cavern floor, along the walls and the cavern roof. I was taking so much small-arms fire the problem was not so much the damage it was doing but being able to see. and make sense of sensor information through the constant hail of shard and beam.

‘Cover!’ I shouted to Balor as I let off a very long burst with the Retributor, the jet on my propulsion fin sending me flying backwards towards Balor’s position. He fired a salvo of rockets at the cavern mouth to give us some breathing space.

The missiles exploded ahead of me with sufficient force to shake the asteroid. The warheads superheated their hydrogen payload to plasma state, creating fire that would burn in space. It flowed like liquid. It incinerated the Berserks in the cavern mouth and left the Walker burning. Balor finished it off with another 105-millimetre shell from his mass driver, sending it tumbling out into the void, still burning. In a strange way, with the lack of sound and the exaggerated movement of zero G, this was all somewhat beautiful and balletic, especially the fire in space. The zero G and silence somehow gave it a sense of unreality. Then again maybe that was just the drugs.

Just as soon as we’d incinerated the last wave more were surging into the cavern. Pagan still hadn’t joined us.

‘Pagan!’ I shouted. Nothing. ‘Pagan!’ I shouted again.

‘Not now,’ Pagan answered. I couldn’t believe it. What was so fucking important? I was firing almost non-stop now. There were so many of Them I barely had to move the weapon.

‘Balor! If Pagan does not join us in the next three seconds, shoot him. Do it with the mass driver,’ I ordered.

‘Huh?’ Balor said intelligently.

‘Just wait,’ Pagan said.

‘For what!’ I shouted, but he didn’t answer. Then I was taking hits from behind. My initial thoughts were that Rannu, Mudge and Gregor had gone down, but the split screen on my internal visual display told otherwise. The alien growth that we’d found in the cavern was transforming, growing into nozzle-like, black-light weapons. I could also see what looked like Berserks growing out of it, pulling themselves out onto the cavern floor. Ahead of us the limbs and body parts we’d previously blown apart were being drawn together by strands of the black liquid, forming into crawling masses that crept slowly towards us. I checked my ammo counter – my ammunition drum had less than a quarter left in it. This was it then, this was how we go down.

Balor shouted an ordnance-firing warning over the tac net. The rocket battery on his left shoulder swivelled round and fired four missiles into the cavern behind us. They blossomed into silent flame that rolled and flowed across the entire cavern, incinerating the newly grown black-light weapons and Berserks.

I was pulling back on foot. Taking more and more small-arms fire as I let out short stuttering bursts from the Retributor, trying to conserve ammo.

‘It’s a set-up! He’s set us up!’ Pagan shouted over the tac net. I noticed that he’d excluded Gregor from the net. A cold feeling ran up my spine. Pagan came from around his column of rock and let loose with a long burst from his still fully loaded Retributor. Berserks just in front of me were torn apart seeming to explode in the zero G.

‘What’re you talking- Shit! What’re you talking about, Pagan?’ Mudge demanded over the net.

‘The code for disarming the pods, it’s nothing. There’s no code, it’s meaningless junk!’ Pagan shouted, still providing covering fire for my retreat.

‘It was encrypted. Did you trip something that destroyed it?’ I demanded.

‘We don’t have time for this. No, I didn’t! Trust me. I know what I’m doing!’

‘What does this mean?’ Mudge asked. The only other time I’d heard such desperation in his voice was when he’d run out of drugs and booze.

‘There are no pods!’ Pagan shouted, now firing desperately as Berserks and impromptu masses of re-formed alien flesh moved closer to us.

‘Buy us some time, Balor,’ I said. Two more rockets flew overhead and we were bathed in an orange light as liquid flame cleared the cave entrance. I stopped firing to conserve ammo and let Pagan clear up the stragglers.

‘It means there are no pods! Gregor lied to us!’ Pagan shouted,

‘Why?’ I asked, though I already knew the answer.

‘He is Crom!’ Pagan answered.

‘He can’t be Crom,’ I shouted back. ‘He put us on to the Cabal. He told us about Blackworm, Crom and Demiurge. He helped us and tried very fucking hard to kill Rolleston. If it hadn’t been for him we’d all be dead.’ But even as I was saying it I was piecing it together. I remembered Rolleston on the assault shuttle doing something with his skull fucker. Why had he even bothered with the knife when he was capable of wreaking havoc with his bare hands? Nostalgia? He must have been putting Crom into some sort of delivery system in the hilt. When he’d stabbed Gregor in the head he’d infected Gregor with Crom. That’s why the wound had taken so much longer than the others to heal, because Gregor had been trying to fight off the infection. Trying not to become Crom.

It had been right in front of me, but I hadn’t seen it because I had wanted my friend back and I had wanted to trust my friend. Well, I could trust my friend. This wasn’t Gregor. This was all on Rolleston.

‘I think Pagan may be right,’ I said. Even then I didn’t want to believe it. Even then what I said still sounded like another betrayal in my ears.

‘Why bring us?’ Balor growled over the tac net.

‘In case he needed our help to get close enough to one of the main population centres,’ I said. ‘Because he knew we’d attract a lot of attention when we were finally compromised. Bait to bring more of Them in to be infected.’ I started firing as the cave mouth started filling up again, angry, frustrated, betrayed.

‘What the fuck!’ I’d never heard Rannu sound surprised and certainly never heard him swear before. I checked the feed from Rannu and Mudge’s Mamluks and froze momentarily. Gregor’s organic battle form had stepped forward towards the advancing Them forces. His tentacles had shot out in front of him, piercing the Berserks, crawling masses and even a Walker’s chitinous exoskeleton. From each of Them pierced by one of the tentacles, similar tentacles shot out into other nearby aliens and so on until all the aliens at that end of the cavern were linked by pulsing tendrils originating with Gregor.

‘Rannu! Mudge! On me now! Balor, sanitise that area!’ I shouted.

Rannu and Mudge triggered their propulsion fins, shooting backwards towards our position at dangerous speeds. The cavern was full of rocket contrails as Balor emptied both his shoulder batteries. My railgun ran dry. I ejected the power lead and let the now useless weapon drift away in zero G. Rannu touched down and Mudge sort of skidded in on his arse. The back of the cavern was now filled with plasma fire.

‘Through there now!’ I pointed at the plasma flames back where Rannu and Mudge had just come from. They never would’ve survived the blast but our Mamluks might survive the flames. Another feed flicked on in my internal visual display but I didn’t have time to pay attention to it.

‘The suits will never-’ Pagan started.

‘Now!’ I screamed. The five of us took off. The jets on our propulsion fins at near full burn, pointing in the direction our navigation systems remembered the cave mouth to be. Time seemed to slow down as we entered the lake of fire. It was beautiful. I barely noticed the heat or the smell of my own flesh cooking. I ignored the warning symbols coming through the interface from the Mamluk. It was like flying into a sun. This I decided would not be a bad way to die.

‘I’m sorry…’ I wasn’t even sure I’d heard the comms message through the heavy interference, it was so faint, but I could’ve sworn it was Gregor’s voice, and then I was in the cold of space again.

Below us the small tethered asteroid in which we had sheltered was crawling with Them. It looked like someone had stamped on an ants’ nest: every square inch of it was covered with the aliens. The space surrounding the asteroid was full of Them vessels and Their flight-capable organic mechs. According to the diagnostic readings I was getting, the Mamluk was in a bad way. My comms were barely functioning; the Mamluk still had integrity but much of the armour was slag. The joints on my right arm and leg had melted solid and I couldn’t move them. Other than lenses, the majority of my sensors were down as well. I was just lucky the heat shielding on the propulsion fin had held and the jet fuel hadn’t gone up. I put the internal repair systems to work on the comms system. I don’t know why – I was probably about to be erased from existence by black light.

Balor, Mudge, Rannu and Pagan had made it out. All of their mechs looked partially melted where the armour had run and then solidified again. We were lucky they hadn’t just shattered from the sudden temperature change. Mudge and Rannu’s Retributors had melted beyond use. Pagan’s looked usable from where I was, but that meant nothing. Below us the cave mouth was still burning.

‘What the fuck!’ Mudge’s voice came over faint and through heavy interference.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Pagan said.

From the cave mouth a huge, thick, burning tentacle flicked out of the flames. Then another. What had once been Gregor pulled itself out of the cave mouth. He looked similar to before but bigger. I could see all over him the individual forms of Berserks and other Them-forms melding with his flesh. They were being sucked in, forming thicker chitinous plates or other stranger features like screaming mouths – these must have been a reaction to the burning pain from what had once been Gregor’s subconscious. The fact that he was still burning made him look all the more demonic. On the surface of the asteroid They surged towards this monstrosity.

‘No!’ I shouted uselessly. The mass of writhing tentacles on its back shot out, piercing Berserks, and again the chain reaction of biological connection spread through them. Tendrils even shot into the void, piercing Walkers and small spacecraft.

Pagan fired his Retributor at Crom’s demonic form, a long wild burst. I triggered both the missiles on my back. Warning symbols appeared on my internal visual display – both the launch tubes were too heavily damaged.

‘Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!’ I triggered the explosive bolts on the tubes and jetted away from them before the warheads exploded. I saw Rannu doing something similar. Mudge managed to get one away but had to eject the other. We were only taking light fire; most of Them in the area were either connected to Crom or concerned with dealing with him.

I heard Balor screaming over the tac net, but reception was intermittent at best. Mudge’s missile exploded against Crom but it barely seemed to stagger him. Balor dived towards Crom, firing round after round from the mass driver. These did affect him, driving him back, dragging his network of attached Them with him. The mass driver ran dry and Balor switched to the 30-millimetre railgun, firing it on full automatic as he got closer and closer to Crom.

Balor’s Dog Soldier mech impacted into Crom’s central mass, bouncing both of them off the asteroid. Crom didn’t go far as he was tethered by all the Them he was attached to. The Dog Soldier still had a grip on him. Balor re-established contact with the asteroid with one boot. With the other he slammed Crom back down against the asteroid and brought the railgun round to bear at point-blank range.

‘… to the Spear, we need immediate fire support on this grid reference, over! Gibby, we need you. Gregor is Crom. We need the area completely sanitised, do you copy?’ My comms system had suddenly come back to life. It was Pagan’s desperate voice I could hear over the tac net.

A whipping tentacle cut Balor’s railgun in two before he could fire. Crom stood up, easily pulling the Dog Soldier off the asteroid and lifting it into space before slamming it back down against the rock. Both of them were being hit by high-powered, black-light beams and heavy-calibre shard rounds. Missiles were flying towards them but the burning Crom’s black-light, anti-missile defence system was still active, and he was growing more and more of the gristly nozzles with every moment.

Pagan, Rannu, Mudge and I were effectively useless. We could do nothing but sit around and take fire until something got through. The only reason we weren’t dead was that They were far more concerned with Crom.

I heard it first. The singing, like I’d heard in my vision. But it was different, more human somehow, and it was coming through our tac net. I saw the new feed. It was coming from Morag’s mech. She was surrounded by pale bioluminescence. She seemed to be hovering in the centre of Maw City. She was broadcasting the singing. All around her were various Them craft up to about light cruiser size and various flight-capable Them. Several of the huge tentacles that we’d seen earlier writhed around her but did not touch her.

Balor’s Dog Soldier mech had Crom by the neck with one hand and was pounding him repeatedly and rapidly with its other huge metal fist. It didn’t seem to be doing much except stopping Crom from taking other action. Over the tac net I could still hear Pagan begging for fire support. God knew how many of Them were now infected by Crom.

Suddenly Crom grabbed the hand that was pounding him, pulled it off at the wrist and stood up, towering over Balor’s Dog Soldier. With a wrench he pulled the Dog Soldier’s hand from around his neck and then broke the joint in that arm. The Dog Soldier’s laser anti-missile defence system was firing point blank into Crom with little effect. With what seemed like agonising slowness Crom grabbed the front of the Dog Soldier’s chest and dug powerful claws into it, piercing and tearing armour plate.

‘Christ,’ I barely heard Mudge whisper over the net. Crom tore off a large piece of foot-thick armour plate, exposing Balor to space. We all watched as Crom pulled Balor’s impossibly still struggling form from the ruptured Dog Soldier. I could see Balor moving within Crom’s grip. Almost involuntarily I zoomed in on him. Balor’s heavy cybernetic conversion enabled him to survive briefly in a vacuum. I saw him reach up for his eyepatch. Terrified and fascinated I had to watch as he lifted the patch.

There was a very bright light. Before the lenses on the Mamluk burnt out, their flash compensators overloaded, I saw Balor as if in X-ray, his flesh transparent, the machine inside silhouetted by the light. All my systems went down briefly, which should not happen in a mech that was EMP-hardened like the Mamluk. My internal visual display went dark. It flickered back into life as replacement lenses slid into place. I had no idea what had just happened, and there was no concussion wave. I was still hovering where I had been. There was a huge crater in the asteroid, as if a chunk had been bitten out of it. Crom was lying next to the crater, the right side of his body gone. Silent, screaming mouths seemed to cover the left side of his body. Balor was of course nowhere to be seen.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Mudge asked over the net. I had never seen a weapon like it. I felt sickened as I saw that Crom was somehow still moving. I watched as tendrils grew from his cauterised and charred left side, pulling Them into the wound, Their flesh melting and melding into his as he re-grew his missing left side. Balor had died for nothing.

I felt numb. We’d done this: we’d handed Them to the Cabal. Pagan was still begging Gibby over the net, his pleading mixed in with prayers and sobbing. Mudge, Rannu, Pagan and I weren’t even taking evasive action now; we just hovered in space, the integrity of our armour slowly being chipped away by small-arms fire.

On the feed from Morag’s Mamluk I could see that one of the huge tentacles had formed its tip into manipulators and grabbed her mech by the back of its neck. I saw her armour jerk and spasm, presumably as the tentacle’s manipulators pierced it, and the singing stopped.

Crom stood up as more and more tentacles shot out into the void. Above the asteroid there was now a net of craft connected to the walking virus.

The drugs had pretty much worn off now, and I realised there was no more I could do. I could feel the sickness now, my body failing and shutting down much like my mech. I reckoned it had only been adrenalin keeping me alive for some minutes now.

I heard strident and abrasive guitar music.

‘Shut the fuck up, Pagan, you’re boring us,’ Gibby drawled over the tac net. Us? The air filled with plasma and heavy laser fire, missile after missile shot overhead and then the Spear soared into view, every inch of it under fire from the multitude of Them craft which swarmed around it.

Hit after hit from the Spear’s heavy ordnance hit Crom, doing real damage to him, blowing chunks off. Heavy plasma missiles turned the area around him into a sea of fire.

‘You’re coming in too fast!’ I screamed over the tac net. My only reply was laughter from Gibby. I realised it was too heavily damaged to change course.

‘Out of here now!’ I screamed at Rannu, Mudge and Pagan. Mudge grabbed Rannu as the Nepalese’s propulsion fin didn’t seem to be working, and the three of us triggered full burn on our jets, shooting away from the tethered asteroid.

Judging by the force of the explosion, Gibby must have triggered the remaining warheads he had on board. Behind us everything was red as the asteroid was reduced to gravel. The concussion wave slammed into us and mercifully I passed out, though I was pretty sure I’d died.

‘Do you think They’ll believe we came in peace?’ I heard Mudge say through the pain and the nausea. I hoped that Mudge wasn’t in my particular part of the afterlife just yet. I managed to open my eyes. I was still in the prison of my Mamluk. We were floating in space. Rannu’s Mamluk was holding onto mine. A quick diagnostic told me that my mech was just about working and keeping space out. Pagan was still with us as well.

All around us were flight-capable Them, Walkers and other organic mechs, their honeycombed propulsion systems glowing pale blue. The weird thing was They weren’t firing on us. They just seemed to be covering us. It was like They’d taken us prisoner, but They didn’t do that.

I was still receiving feed. Morag was still where she had been, suspended in space, the tentacle gripping the back of her neck. I checked her vital signs. She seemed fine. I mumbled something unintelligible.

‘He’s awake,’ Pagan said.

‘But not making any sense,’ Mudge pointed out.

‘What’s happening to Morag?’ I asked.

‘As far as we can tell, she’s in communication with Them,’ Pagan said. ‘I think they’ve connected to her through her plugs somehow, and the remnants of Ambassador in her ware are enabling her to talk to Them.’ My vision was very blurry and seemed to be fading. The pain was receding somehow as well. Morag was surrounded by light.

I wished I could hear the singing again. I wished I could talk to Morag just once more.

‘How’re we going to get home?’ Pagan wondered. Maybe I could hear the singing.

‘How the hell are we still alive?’ Mudge asked.

‘I don’t think I am,’ I said. I could definitely hear the singing now. Morag looked beautiful in the light. I kicked off towards her with a slow burn from my manoeuvring fin. There was shouting over the tac net but I ignored it. Morag seemed to glow brighter as everything else got darker.