War in Heaven

22

I stand in the centre of the great hall at Dinas Emrys on fire. Around me the stone starts to burn. I’m screaming. Some of the screaming is words. Those words are, ‘Where is she?!’

Pagan looks to be at his wits’ end. ‘You’re doing this to yourself!’ he shouts at me.

There just isn’t a way to manage this amount of pain. I can feel it through the morphine, through a chemically induced coma. Plasma is a one-shot kill unless you’re Balor or Rolleston. I get all the effects of the hit but none of the fun of dying. I think I’m aware of other pain beyond the burning. The human mind isn’t set up for this. This constant burning is the biblical hell the Christians talk about. Maybe I am dead. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life but surely nothing to deserve this.

I am put into a suit of warm meat. It breathes. It has its own pulse. New pain and more drugs. I am a lot lighter, easier for them to move, now that I only have half a body and should be dead.

I stand in the centre of the great hall at Dinas Emrys. I am still on fire.

‘You have to listen to me, Jakob. You are doing this. This is a manifestation of biofeedback. Your body burned and your mind is making it real, here, in the net as well.’

I know this. I’m not setting fire to stone now. I am not destroying code with the thought of pain. Even here I can still feel it though. Even here I still burn.

‘Where is she?’ I ask. Pagan does not have an answer for me. How can he tell me that she is hiding from me?

Dinas Emrys again. It’s the only place I have a semblance of life now.

‘I don’t want to die in space,’ I tell Mudge. Mudge’s icon that looks like Mudge. I’d need a mouth to tell him in the real world and all I have is charred mess.

‘I won’t let you die in space, man. If it looks like we’re not going to get picked up, I’ll use your own laser on you.’

‘That would still be dying in space,’ I point out.

‘Oh yeah, but you know at least you won’t run out of air and slowly suffocate or anything.’

‘I want you to know you’re a huge comfort to me. You could always save time and trouble and do it now. There’s nothing left of me anyway. Do it now.’

Normally Mudge would meet such a request with utter scorn but now he just looks uncomfortable.

‘You’re regrowing what you’ve lost, what the plasma took.’ Normally Mudge has no problem looking me in the eye and in here our eyes aren’t lenses.

‘I’m not comfortable with that.’

Now he looks at me. ‘Metal and plastic, alien nanites — what difference does it make? You’ve got to stop looking for the easy way out.’

Where’s Balor when you need him? He would have killed me in a second.

‘Where is she?’

‘Look, I can explain. Pagan can explain. You’re overreacting to-’

‘I don’t want to hear an explanation. Where is she?’ I want to discuss betrayal.

‘She’s too frightened to see you. Look, Salem’s out is sound.’

‘It’s for ore, the high G’s from the acceleration would powder bone.’

‘Not if we use their exo-armour suits. Their life-support systems are keeping you alive while you-’

‘Regenerate? Like an earthworm? What if I don’t want to go?’

‘Listen to yourself, man. Soloso and Strange survived. I just thought you should know. According to the information, the fleet is due to set sail in a couple of days’ time. We need to get back. This is our best hope.’

‘You don’t need me.’

‘You don’t want to die here, man. The air smells of greasy farts.’

He had a point.

Mudge showed me the footage. I was heavily sedated throughout the whole thing. He showed me Soloso and Strange saying goodbye. Soloso suggested that it would be unwise for us to ever return to Moa City. I couldn’t imagine why we’d want to.

It was surprisingly simple. Salem had a good eye for security weaknesses. We joined a cargo consignment. Pagan, Morag, Merle, Mudge, Rannu, Cronin and I were all wearing the stolen Themtech exo-armour. They were called Hellions. We were put in a crate and the crate was filled with counter-acceleration gel, the same stuff that we’d used in the OILO drop and that air and space fighter pilots filled their cockpits with. We were then smuggled into the cargo yard. No hacking involved, just a forged barcode and a switchover out of sight of Demiurge. Then we waited.

Even unconscious I felt our upward spiral ride on the catapult, a giant mass driver designed to fire cargo into orbit. Burned and new-growth flesh battered at impossible Gs. It felt like every blood cell burst. Despite the gel, we were all moved from the front of the container to the back. Even the flesh components of the Hellions became one huge bruise.

In orbit we’d cut through the container and pushed out some of the gel, hoping that nobody was scanning us too hard. Then Pagan sent the tight beam signal. We waited. Then he did it again. We waited some more. Well I say we. I was unconscious and yet still failing in pain management. I didn’t care. This could end in the flash of a particle beam weapon and all it would have meant to me was sweet release.

If I’d been a little less self-involved then maybe I would have thought of Tailgunner, Mother, Big Henry and Cat. Not to mention the seventy or so of Mother’s people, the resistance and belligerent street gangs who’d died in the diversionary attacks. People whose names we’d never even know, and mobilisation or not, Rolleston’s people would still be trying to track them down. No wonder Soloso and Strange didn’t want us back.

Oh yes, Cronin. Seems he’d defected. Seems that he was as scared of Rolleston as everyone else, maybe more so. He’d almost got himself killed by providing some initial information and then refusing to say anything else unless we got him off world and away from Rolleston.

It seemed that Rolleston put Cronin in harm’s way. As the attack began, Rolleston had transported Cronin and Kring through the Citadel’s added-on flesh parts to the boardroom. The slime they were covered in was lubricant. It helped you get transported through the root system better. We’d all been covered in it after Morag had hacked my flesh, turned me into something else and used me to interface with the roots.

And the hack had been successful. Except now, surely they knew that their systems were compromised? They knew about our miraculous escape and they would know that we had Cronin.

More than a day in space and the Tetsuo Chou had appeared. At which point they’d found us. Mudge showed me missiles fired over the planetary horizon, fighters trying to reach a firing point from higher and lower orbits. The Tetsuo Chou had taken some hits but in the end its speed carried the day and it managed to reach a safe distance to set sail.

I’d missed the ballet and the bright lights in the night. I’d missed the old near-dead red star and looking down on that huge stinking planet one last time. I’d missed fucking nothing.

I was staring at Morag as Black Annis. She was aware of it. Everyone else was aware of it. Even Cronin was aware of it and this was his debrief. For debrief read interrogation.

Rolleston and Josephine Bran had survived. Of course they had. They couldn’t be killed, it seemed, even if lava seemed a pretty final way to deal with a disagreement. Salem’s people had got eyes on both of them in Moa City after Morag had turned the Citadel to steam.

‘We got you off the planet; now tell us what you know,’ Black Annis said, trying to ignore me, her voice like stones being ground together.

‘I need some kind of guarantee, a deal, one you’re not empowered to make,’ Cronin said. Apparently he was much calmer now. His calmness was increasing in direct proportion to his distance away from Rolleston.

‘Dude, you know we can get this out of you if we want — it won’t even take us that long,’ Mudge said reasonably. He was smoking a virtual cigarette. That seemed even more pointless than virtual whisky. Still it did look tasty.

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Mr Mudgie,’ Cronin said with just a trace of smugness.

I was irritated to see him wearing a high-quality expressive icon made by Morag. He looked now as we had seen him when we discussed democracy on a system-wide broadcast after we’d released God onto the net. Dapper, well dressed, handsome and shrewd — in short everything the high-flying corporate exec should be. According to Pagan, the higher spec the icon, the easier to gauge the subject’s responses in interrogation. ‘You’re the good guys. I don’t think you’ll torture me.’

The smugness in his tone was enough to distract me from staring at Annis’s horrible blue-skinned visage.

‘Arsehole, everyone here wants to kill you,’ I told him. ‘I’d cooperate.’

‘You kill me, you’ll learn nothing.’

‘We’ve already raided your isolated system,’ Annis growled. Cronin’s head snapped around to look at her. Pagan turned to her, Merle was positively glaring at her, and even Rannu was shaking his head.

‘Bullshit. Demiurge would have enslaved you at best,’ he said, but he sounded unsure. He was good enough at his job to read our body language, even in here, and would know by our reactions that we were telling the truth. Then a smile spread over his face. I hadn’t been expecting that. It looked like hope.

‘I don’t see why you’re smiling,’ Annis said. ‘We know everything we need to about the attack.’

‘You’re going to have to buy your life,’ Rannu told him. It sounded pretty serious coming from the Ghurkha.

‘I’m afraid your masters will disagree. I am far too valuable to them. They will want to make a deal.’

‘You see any of them here?’ Mudge asked as he looked around the great hall. I could hear him getting angry. ‘I don’t think we have masters. I think we have people we work with, and I would have thought you more than anyone would know that we are very bad at doing what we’re told.’

‘I hadn’t credited you with stupidity, Mr Mudgie-’

‘You’ve never dated him.’ I would have thought that Merle was joking except for the deadpan delivery. What was more interesting, Cronin would not look at him.

‘Whether you like it or not, I have more useful intel and insight on the situation than anything you could get from Demiurge,’ Cronin told us.

‘How? Isn’t Demiurge omniscient?’ Pagan asked.

‘You know that the Earth authorities will need to deal with me.’

‘They will just torture the info out of you,’ Annis said.

I didn’t believe that, and I could tell most of the others in the room felt the same way. They’d make a deal. Cronin would disappear and someone with a new face would be welcomed back into the powerbroker fold.

‘He’s right. We have no choice but to run him through interrogation sense programs and kill him before we get to Earth,’ I said grimly.

‘I don’t think you could do that, Mr Douglas,’ Cronin said.

‘I’ve tortured and killed better men than you for information, Cronin. You may think yourself pretty important but to me you’re just another arsehole, and if you don’t think I’ll torture you then you clearly have no idea what we went through when you guys captured us,’ I told him.

Rannu was nodding. His face was cold and emotionless. I was pretty sure that he wanted to hurt this man as much as I did. To an extent Cronin was right — I didn’t want to torture him because I didn’t like to think of myself as that sort of person, but I would if I had to. I wouldn’t lose much sleep either.

‘You remember me, don’t you, Cronin?’ Merle said. Cronin’s icon blanched. ‘Well, you know what I was capable of on a job. Now imagine I’m angry because my sister got killed. Now imagine that I hold you at least partially responsible for that.’

‘That wasn’t me! That was Rolleston! I’m telling you, he’s sick! He’s completely lost it! Same with the torture. It was all him!’ The boardroom polish was slipping. His Detroit street roots could be heard now.

‘Arsehole, there’s only one deal to make and it’s with us. And the only deal is that you make it to the end of this voyage,’ Mudge told him.

Cronin looked around at us all. I don’t think he liked what he saw.

‘You’re all fucking crazy. You’ve no idea what an asset I am,’ he said desperately.

‘Convince us,’ Mudge told him. ‘If you live long enough then you can make your deal when we get back.’

Like fuck, I thought.

Cronin had my attention now though I couldn’t stop looking over at Black Annis from time to time. She would never meet my eyes.

‘So you and Rolleston wanted to rule the world and now you’ve had a falling out?’ Mudge asked.

‘No. That wasn’t what we were going to do.’

‘Oh no, this is the next big step for humanity,’ I said acidly.

‘We evolve to slavery?’ Mudge asked.

Cronin looked pained. He had an expression on his face that suggested even if he explained it to us very carefully, using small words, we still wouldn’t get it.

‘Have you ever thought about the potential of each individual, even the dumbest, least ambitious and least imaginative? If nothing else they have huge potential for industry, potential vastly enhanced by our interface with technology. Then think about all the intelligent, ambitious, imaginative and hard-working members of the human race. Now imagine what we could accomplish if all of us pulled together. If we all locked step and moved forward trying to improve ourselves as a race, as a whole, instead of bickering and fighting over ultimately meaningless things. With the war we’ve seen what humanity can accomplish almost working together, the leaps in technology, the co-operation-’

‘The constant fucking misery,’ I added.

‘Now imagine we don’t require the stimulus of an external threat. Imagine every one of us is working together towards a common goal, the progress of us as a species. Imagine what we would accomplish.’

‘Is this how you sell totalitarianism to yourself?’ Mudge asked.

Cronin looked deeply frustrated. ‘How do you walk upright?’ he demanded.

‘We understand you. You’re not the smartest person in this room by a long shot,’ I snapped, angry at his patronising tone.

‘It’s not Jakob either,’ Mudge said, grinning.

I glared at him. He was right though.

‘Look, you’ve been told a lie. We don’t all have a right to what we want. Sacrifices have to be made. We are talking about a vast paradigm change. We’re talking about humanity becoming an almost new organism.’

‘You’re talking about the death of individuality,’ Morag said.

Why was our interrogation sounding like a philosophy discussion? I hated this bullshit. It was wank that got in the way of life. Why couldn’t people just get on with it?

‘Yes!’ Cronin shouted enthusiastically. ‘But you say that as if it’s a bad thing. At the root of it all we’re all just one step away from lizard-brained animals. We’ve been brainwashed to the point where all we can think of is our own selfish desires. We were going to work together, all of us.’ Then he looked around. ‘I mean, individuality, how’s that working out for you? You all happy?’

Again his smugness left me with the strong urge to hit him.

‘I am,’ Mudge said.

‘Mr Mudgie, I have actually read your profile. You’re not happy; you’re on drugs. There is a difference. Look, everyone in the world is miserable-’

‘You’ve been a significant contributor in that,’ Pagan said.

‘And everyone’s lonely.’ I saw Mudge glance involuntarily at Merle. I wondered if Morag was looking at me. ‘The experiment of individuality has failed.’

‘Free choice isn’t an experiment,’ I said angrily.

‘No, it’s an illusion. You’ve had little choice throughout your life. Anything that feels like free will has always been within parameters set by others. The closest you came to breaking that resulted in a conflict that may destroy humanity. Do you understand how selfish and destructive it is?’

‘We could just as easily lay that responsibility at your door,’ Pagan told him. ‘All we wanted to do was give people the chance to understand what was going on and make decisions themselves.’

‘People don’t want that. People want easy lives.’

‘Which they don’t have,’ I said.

‘People want others to make the hard decisions for them. Most people barely want to think. The reason that Earth is mobilising to fight us, the reason that people like you were sent after us, was because other powerful people have a lot to lose if we’d succeeded. Whether you like it or not, we were going to give people what they wanted. You see, all the pain you feel is because of your individuality. We were going to end that. We were finally and for all time going to make humanity both happy and constructive.’

‘A perfectly ordered clockwork society,’ Pagan said.

‘This is bullshit,’ Merle said. ‘I don’t want to hear him justify himself.’

‘But thank you for your contribution, Mr Sommerjay, and yours, Mr Nagarkoti, and of course -’ he turned to look at Pagan ‘- we couldn’t have done it without your help, Mr Simm.’

Pagan looked stricken. The rigours of the mission, the repeated wounds, the guilt at his betrayal, all seemed to have aged Pagan, even in here.

Good. Fuck him.

‘How?’ I asked. ‘Have Demiurge possess everyone? That’ll only work on everyone with neural cybernetics.’ Then I realised that thanks to the war that was almost everyone, certainly everyone that mattered. Mattered. I was starting to think like them.

‘Possession by Demiurge wouldn’t lead to co-operation; it would lead to an orgy of pain, violence and suffering that would finally wipe us out,’ Rannu said.

Cronin was nodding.

‘Good plan then,’ Mudge commented.

‘Mr Nagarkoti is correct. It would, but Demiurge was only a part of what we’d planned and it didn’t turn out quite the way we thought it would.’

‘So how?’ I asked again, getting more irritated.

‘We were going to remake humanity. Nanite biotechnology derived from Themtech. Imagine Them but with drive, imagination, purpose, creativity, skills and knowledge.’

I’m not sure why, but the thought filled me with horror. It made me think of humanity as a swarm of hungry insects eating everything in its way across the stars.

Merle laughed. ‘This is evil-genius bullshit. This is like some viz. Nobody does this shit,’ he said. Maybe he was trying to convince himself.

‘Mr Sommerjay, once you get to a certain level of influence, subverting governments and mass-controlling populations becomes relatively easy. All we were doing was utilising technology available to us in the most useful manner for humanity.’

‘And you can do this?’ I asked. Cronin just looked at me as if I was stupid. Of course they could. ‘Delivery?’ I asked. Now Cronin seemed surprised. I saw some of the others exchange glances.

‘I don’t know. I assumed that was the information you took from Demiurge at the Citadel.’ He was looking around at us questioningly.

‘Jakob was injured; he hasn’t been briefed yet,’ Pagan told Cronin as if he was reassuring him.

Cronin turned back to me. ‘It’s nanotechnology, Mr Douglas. It will not be difficult to smuggle to Earth and infect the populace.’

‘Didn’t even tell you, huh?’ I asked.

‘It was compartmentalised. It wasn’t my area of responsibility. I didn’t need to know.’ Obviously Rolleston was really paranoid.

‘I’m interested why you get to make this decision for us?’ Morag demanded.

‘Because they have the power and the resources to fuck with us. Same as it ever was,’ Merle said.

Cronin was nodding. ‘Humanity elected us to do it. If not, we would not have been allowed to manoeuvre ourselves into the situation we find ourselves.’

‘Or to put it another way, you’re arrogant and delusional pricks who think you know what’s best for us,’ Mudge replied.

‘Besides, surely the fact that we’re all here shows that people don’t want this,’ Rannu said quietly.

‘Or it’s a knee-jerk fear reaction before a major change.’

‘And you’d be joining the collective?’ Mudge asked.

‘People need to-’ Cronin began.

‘I thought not.’

‘There are management concerns and issues of vision.’

‘Oh yes, we couldn’t have a rudderless race of zombies roaming space,’ Mudge said sarcastically.

‘They don’t have masters,’ Morag said. ‘They are a true collective.’

The fact that she was sticking up for Them angered me for some reason.

‘They are also not truly sentient and only react to stimuli. We’re talking about our race acting in perfect concert.’

‘You’re talking about a human hive mind,’ Morag said.

‘And you’re talking about controlling it. That’s too much power,’ Rannu said.

Cronin was starting to look uncomfortable.

‘If you’re controlling it but not part of the hive, then won’t that make you the dumbest human alive?’ I asked.

Now Cronin was looking really uncomfortable. He didn’t answer.

Pagan got there first. ‘Unless you weren’t just part of it but were controlling it.’

I watched Cronin’s icon swallow hard. I couldn’t quite get my head around it. What humanity would look like, how it would act.

‘You understand that the very act of taking on that mantle, of ascending, would change the person who did it. You’re thinking that it would be me. It would not; it would be an ascended being that was once me.’ Now he sounded uncomfortable.

‘Is this what the Cabal were up to?’ Mudge asked.

‘No, they were small frightened men,’ Cronin said.

‘Who was?’ I asked. I knew the answer. There was a look close to awe on Cronin’s face.

‘What’s this about?’ Pagan suddenly demanded.

‘Apotheosis,’ Cronin said.

Mudge and Pagan were looking close to fear. I was just getting pissed off.

‘What the fuck does that mean?’ I demanded.

‘To become divine,’ Mudge said quietly.

‘This is Rolleston’s plan, isn’t it?’ Pagan asked. ‘He wants to be God.’

Cronin nodded. ‘Rolleston is a great man. Only he saw the true potential in Themtech.’ Then his face crumpled and he started to sob. I don’t think any of us were quite expecting this. His icon was programmed for real tears as well.

‘You’re all so fucking British about this sort of thing. It would’ve been better if we’d tortured this out of him,’ Merle said.

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!’ Cronin wailed.

I pointed at him. ‘See, if you’re going to betray someone that’s the correct reaction.’

Annis looked angry but then it was the icon’s default expression. Pagan at least looked embarrassed and guilty. Mudge thought it was funny.

‘That’s assuming you give a shit. It’s not betrayal if your victim’s a whining bitch,’ Merle said. It may have been an attempt at humour.

‘How did you fall from his grace?’ Pagan asked.

‘Look, Rolleston is not an ordinary man like you or me. He can’t be judged by our criteria,’ Cronin told us a little too earnestly for my taste. It seemed he was desperate for us to understand, to see what he saw when he looked at him.

‘We don’t care about judging him, just killing him,’ I said. Merle and Rannu were nodding. Cronin look shocked. Like I’d said something blasphemous.

‘Even now after I’ve explained it to you, all you can think of is your own petty base desires?’ he demanded.

‘If you want to put it that way.’

‘It’s all I can ever think about,’ Mudge added.

‘You can’t understand this because you are simple-minded terrorists who want to drag everything down to your own sordid level.’

‘We understand it. We just like our sordid level,’ Mudge explained. Cronin shook his head in mock sympathy. ‘No, Mr Mudgie, you do not. Because you have never been part of anything extraordinary.’

‘Fucking the Cabal over was quite extraordinary,’ I said. Rannu, Pagan and Mudge were all nodding.

‘Because it was working against something not for something.’

Merle moved forward and before anyone could stop him grabbed one of Cronin’s fingers and snapped it. Cronin screamed.

‘Not sure that was going to work in here,’ Merle said.

Cronin was rocking back and forth in his chair clutching his finger. It was at an odd angle.

‘Not only did it work; it has probably damaged the finger on his real body,’ Pagan told him with a slight air of disapproval.

With a look of twisted satisfaction Merle grabbed the finger again and twisted it. ‘Get to the fucking point!’ he shouted, accompanied by Cronin’s screams, before letting go of the broken virtual finger. Merle stood over Cronin while Cronin tried to compose himself through the tears of pain.

‘He has certain proclivities. Like I said, he is a great man. He does not have the tastes that normal men like us have.’

‘What did he do?’ Morag asked quietly. I could hear her starting to get angry.

‘There are places where you can go and do things-’

‘Snuff houses,’ Morag said through gritted, grinding teeth.

‘A bit more sophisticated than that,’ he said.

‘Pretentious, up-market snuff houses,’ Mudge suggested.

I was impressed that Cronin had the ability to look irritated through the pain.

‘He didn’t just go there to kill people.’ I almost killed him when he glanced over at Annis as he said that. She was staring at Cronin with barely controlled fury. ‘He changed their flesh — made them something new.’

‘He ever let you watch?’ Mudge asked in disgust.

The answer was written all over Cronin’s face.

‘So he liked to torture people and then kill them?’ Morag growled.

‘No! You don’t understand. It was something to do with his past…’

‘What?’ Pagan demanded, leaning forward, getting sucked into the story.

‘I don’t know. It was why the Cabal recruited him in the first place, before the war!’

‘Because he was a loony?’ Mudge asked.

‘No, you don’t understand. He thought beyond us; he transcended our morality, which isn’t really our morality any more anyway…’ He was searching for the right way to explain but couldn’t seem to find it. He had a point about morality though. I thought about all the things I’d done just to survive. Something was broken within the entire human race.

‘How could we not know this?’ I asked Pagan angrily. ‘How could God not know this?’

‘There must be no trace of it electronically anywhere,’ Pagan said, but he looked baffled.

‘It makes sense. These places are very careful about their privacy and the privacy of their clients — no records, no surveillance,’ Morag said. She was still staring at Cronin, who seemed to be shrinking from her glare.

‘You know about these places?’ I asked.

She turned to fix me with a stare. Her eyes were black pools. I saw my icon reflected and made small in them.

‘There were always rumours. There was a boy… his name was Michael

… prettiest boy I ever saw. One night some people came for him in a very expensive aircar. We never saw him again. The following day MacFarlane was suddenly a lot richer.’

‘That doesn’t mean-’ Merle started.

Morag silenced him with a look.

‘He’s not lying; look at him,’ she said.

She was right. The cool, calm and contained corporate troubleshooter was slowly being whittled away to reveal a craven apostle.

‘So Rolleston’s a sick fuck. Anyone surprised?’ Mudge asked.

‘Actually yes,’ I said. ‘I always thought he was a cold bastard who didn’t give a shit about anything but getting the job done. I thought he was more like Merle than a psycho. No offence.’ This last to Merle.

It wasn’t until I’d been possessed and then the Citadel that I’d got a glimpse of what Rolleston was really like.

‘None taken. I’d agree with that,’ Merle said. It wasn’t a huge shock that they’d worked together. To me anyway; some of the others didn’t look happy. Particularly Rannu. Merle leaned in close to Cronin. ‘But I think you’d better get to the fucking point.’

Cronin flinched away from him.

‘He merged with Demiurge too early.’

Everyone around the room reacted visibly or audibly except Rannu. I went cold. It was like someone taking a shit in my soul.

‘Rolleston and Demiurge are the same?’ Rannu voiced my fear. His voice sounded tight, like he was being strangled. I knew how he felt. We’d both been some fragment of Rolleston. The ultimate infiltration. The ultimate violation. I got to see what an approximation of sympathy looked like on Annis’s hag-like features. It just made me feel worse.

‘Then the biotech. He started experimenting. Started changing people, making them something else. Something monstrous. Like they were toys, playthings.’ I thought back to the hackers in the ice. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Rolleston had seen that as a practical application of biotechnological engineering in his twisted mind. ‘I had to load my internal drug reservoir with downers just to cope with the horror. He enjoyed watching them grow, the pain it caused them. I just wasn’t strong enough. That’s why Crom — Gregor MacDonald — was the way it was. Why it looked the way it did. Why it…’ Suddenly he looked around all the hard faces in the room and realised this wasn’t the audience for that particular discussion.

‘Suffered?’ Mudge finished.

‘You call our friend “it” once more and I will kill you,’ I told him.

‘You have to understand that it — Mr MacDonald — despite playing a key and beautiful part in what was to come, betrayed him. He had to be punished. You see that, don’t you?’

That people who betrayed you should be punished? Yes, but I decided to keep that to myself.

‘Like you?’ Mudge asked. ‘Should you be in the ice? In the ninth circle?’

I had no idea what he was talking about, but Cronin nodded miserably. I hoped he wasn’t going to cry again. I wasn’t sure if I could master my contempt if he did.

‘I wasn’t strong enough.’

‘So Rolleston intends to remake the world in his image?’ Pagan said.

Cronin nodded. ‘What he sees in his mind will come to be manifest.’

‘We’re lucky that Pagan didn’t merge with God and try the same thing,’ Mudge mused.

‘A world of nice cups of tea, smallholdings and folk music would be lovely,’ Pagan said.

‘Sounds like my idea of hell,’ Merle replied. Mudge was nodding in agreement. Cronin was just looking between them confused and a little disgusted at their flippancy.

‘This world according to Rolleston even scared a sick bastard like you?’ Morag demanded. Cronin nodded and then looked at her.

‘It’s sublime, but it’s hell,’ he told her. ‘And I’m just not strong enough. I never thought I’d be his Judas,’ Cronin said miserably. Morag was staring at him with disgust.

‘A world made over in your own image — surely even Rolleston would get bored,’ I said. I was joking but then I had some idea of what the inside of that bastard’s head looked like.

‘He is transcendent,’ Cronin said. Apparently it was supposed to be an explanation.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘But this is bullshit, right? Delusions of grandeur. He can’t do this, can he?’ I asked.

Everyone just looked at me gravely. They’d reviewed the information that Morag had stolen. Their expressions told me everything. I was scared. It was like being possessed all over again, but he could make the world like that. He’d already started in the colonies. He had the power to twist anything into his fantasies like the Berserks in the Citadel — if they had even started off as Berserks.

‘Who knew?’ Mudge asked.

‘Nobody except Rolleston, me and the-’

‘Grey Lady,’ Morag said.

Cronin nodded. Morag was staring at me. Now I couldn’t meet her eyes. She wasn’t the only one staring. Cronin had an evil little smile on his face. It was the second time he’d come very close to death.

‘The other stuff, his torturing hookers to death?’ Mudge asked.

‘I… I… don’t know. Some of the older members of the Cabal would have known. Before God they had the power to make information disappear. I mean properly, the old-fashioned way, with hard work. They would work very hard to cover their tracks.’

‘I don’t believe this shit,’ Morag said. ‘What are you leaving out?’

‘Nothing! I swear. Can’t you see how hard this is? This isn’t just another deal. I have turned my back on… on…’

‘God?’ Mudge couldn’t keep the sound of contempt out of his voice.

Cronin whipped around to look at him angrily. ‘Yes, Mr Mudgie, for all your studied cynicism and tragically hip posturing, yes, that is what I have turned my back on. I could have been part of something wonderful and instead I’ve lowered myself to your level.’ Now it was Cronin who sounded contemptuous. He shook his head, looking miserable again. ‘Like all of you, I was too frightened, too weak.’

‘Bullshit. You’re holding out on us!’ Morag snapped.

‘I am not!’ he said.

‘I believe you,’ Morag said.

Merle, Pagan and even Mudge tried to stop her, but this was her world. They were way too slow. Rannu and I stayed still. Long black obsidian nails sank into the virtual flesh of Cronin’s icon’s chest. He shook, spasmed and screamed as black lightning played over his virtual body. He died quickly, the biofeedback killing him in the real world. Quickly but in agony. I watched, smiling.

‘You stupid bitch!’ Merle screamed, losing it. I twitched as red fury threatened to overwhelm me but I suppressed it. Black Annis’s head snapped around, her thick black seaweed-like hair whipping with the movement. Merle stopped but his icon still looked furious.

‘Think about where you are!’ she warned. Merle looked like he was going to say something but thought better of it.

‘For someone who didn’t want to kill, you’re getting good at this,’ I said.

‘I’m getting used to it,’ she snapped.

‘You certainly are. How many thousands do you think you killed in the Citadel?’ It was less of a question and more of a stabbing. She didn’t look at me. She didn’t say anything for a while.

‘I’m sorry I used you, Jakob, but don’t push it,’ she growled, and she meant it.

‘He could have been more use,’ I said, nodding towards Cronin’s smoking body.

‘He’d told us everything,’ Morag said.

‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Merle spat.

‘Whose side are you on, I wonder?’ I asked her.

She just glared at me. I thought maybe I’d gone too far and then realised I really didn’t care.

‘Oh yeah, we need more paranoia and distrust on this ship,’ Mudge said.

Annis disappeared in a pillar of black fire. I looked at the space where she’d been.

‘That was a message from Rolleston,’ Mudge said. I looked over at him. ‘Think about it. If he wanted Cronin, all he had to do was possess him. Instead he put Cronin in our way and let us go. He knew that Cronin would spill his guts. It’s narcissism. He wanted us to take Cronin back to Earth.’ Pagan was nodding. ‘Cronin was his prophet, his harbinger, to dress his whole insane plan up in religious terror.’

‘Looks like Morag fucked that plan up,’ I pointed out.

‘We still have to pass the info on,’ Merle said.

‘I want to see the info you got from the Citadel,’ I said.

‘Are you in this?’ Pagan asked.

I just looked at him for a while. ‘Who the fuck are you to question me?’ I finally asked.

Pagan looked pissed off. ‘I’m sorry things went down the way they did, Jakob, I really am, but you need to remember whose house you’re in.’

‘I do. She just left.’ That’s it. Twist the knife in the old man.

‘We’ll show you, but surely we’re out now,’ Mudge said. ‘We’ve done our bit. This is going to be settled with a fleet action and a cat fight in the net, not by a few violent, sneaky bastards.’

He had a point. This had gone way beyond us now, but that didn’t mean there was an end in sight for us. They ran me through the highlights of Rolleston’s plan.

‘Oh,’ I said. The grim expressions around the room matched my own. ‘That couldn’t work, could it?’

‘Unless Earth can work together, it will work,’ Mudge the strategist said.

‘Well fuck it. It’s their problem now,’ I said without much feeling.

The pain was just about manageable now. Old burned flesh sloughed off to be replaced with new pink and tender flesh in a distinctly inhuman way. I lived in the meat suit that was the Hellion, in the care of its life-support systems. I took a lot of painkillers and spent all my time in the sanctum that Morag had designed for me. I stayed away from the others. I didn’t speak to God. We were still keeping what we knew about Rolleston’s plans away from God. Dissemination of that information would cause panic. It made me wonder why we’d bothered in the first place.

Still, it had given me a lot of time to practise with the trumpet. I think I was getting pretty good, particularly with the more bluesy numbers.

In consultation with Mudge we’d worked out how to fill the liquid bladder of the Hellion with whisky, and then hooked it into the isolated net so it synchronised with me taking a sip of virtual whisky. This and the fact that the air scrubbers on the Tetsuo Chou had finally got rid of the rotten eggs smell were the best things that had happened to me so far on the voyage.

I was sitting on a chair on the stage playing a number I’d just learned, watching the motes of dust in the light, when Merle walked in. He’d pretty much been the last person I’d expected to see.

‘How the fuck did you get in here?’ I demanded by way of a welcome.

‘Pagan,’ he told me.

‘Figures. You two have got a lot in common. You may want to tell him that I won’t be trapped in here for ever and he’s already on my shit list. I value my privacy.’

‘You mean you value your sulking time?’ I turned and fixed him with a hard glare. ‘What? You can’t do me in here, and all I have to do is let you slither out of the armour and stomp on you for a while in the real world. Even if you were up to speed, I’ve already kicked your arse once.’

I didn’t answer and wondered if he’d just come to make me feel a little bit more helpless. I reached down for the glass of whisky on the boards of the stage next to the chair leg.

‘You just come here to tell me that?’

‘No, I came to listen to your shitty trumpet playing. Look, I don’t need to justify myself to you, but people get consciously sacrificed every day in this war. It’s nothing new or personal and, guess what? With that stunt you and your friends pulled in Atlantis you stuck your heads above the ramparts. They knew that Rolleston would go for you if offered the bait. Is it shitty? Yes, but get the fuck over yourself because there are a lot bigger things at stake here.’

‘That an apology?’ I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

‘For what? Doing my job? Making the hard decisions?’

I looked him straight in his intense brown eyes. I wondered how much of the intensity was madness.

‘Funny how arseholes use making the hard decisions as an excuse. Rolleston and Cronin both said the same thing.’

‘You would have done the same to me if the positions were reversed.’

‘I would now.’

‘Before. Actually think about it. Someone you don’t know and don’t like versus a significant strategic advantage in the fight of your life? You might wring your hands and whine about it but I’d be gone.’

‘Bullshit. You were on my crew.’ But I knew he was right. He knew I knew it as well, judging by the sneer.

‘Listen to me, you selfish shit.’ He said it in the same casual tone he’d been using since he entered. I felt my eyes narrow. ‘You destroyed my sister’s career and then dragged her halfway across hell’s creation to get her killed. She doesn’t get the chance to sit in the Cotton Club destroying Miles Davis’s music, feeling sorry for herself. She’s just cold and still and we don’t even have a body to bury back home in Philly.’

‘I’m sorry about Cat.’

‘Don’t be. She was a soldier. She knew what she was getting into. You may have had a rough ride — I’m not in the best place to judge — but you can either use that as an excuse to push everyone away and go back to whatever miserable, lonely existence of half-measures and excuses you lived before, or you can just get on with it.’

‘You finished?’ I asked.

Merle stared at me for a while. It was the sort of look you often saw before someone got pissed off enough at you to throw a punch.

‘No. I get that you’re pissed off about being the sacrifice, but Pagan made the right decision. I also get that you think you can push him around in a way that wouldn’t work with me. Well, you can’t. Leave him the fuck alone or I’ll fucking deal with you, okay?’ With a final look of contempt he turned and headed for the door. As he reached it he looked over his shoulder. ‘After you said what you said to Morag about killing all those people, when she got out of the net she threw up. Just thought you should know that you succeeded in hurting her.’ Then he walked out of the door and out of the sanctum.

She didn’t pick her time well. I was good and drunk. I’d decided on that course of action rather than thinking about what Merle had said. Except I was thinking about it. Being drunk, it was much easier to come up with ways to justify my behaviour. Let’s be honest here: Merle and Pagan had betrayed me, and Morag had used me.

Physically I was starting to feel much better. I’d regrown, or rather the alien nanites had regrown, just under half of my body. Sooner or later I was going to have to leave the Hellion and face the others in the flesh.

Drinking was making me maudlin, or maybe I just should’ve thought about this stuff before rather than my own anger and pain. I suspected that the Puppet Show had been their own flavour of bastards, but who wasn’t these days? We — I — still fucked them over. Merle was right: I was no better. I couldn’t whine about betrayal. We’d accomplished so much but for some reason it didn’t feel like a victory. I thought about the losses. The whanau had known that with the resources they had, an attack on the Citadel had been certain death, yet they still did it. They did it fighting for themselves but also fighting for a home world they’d never known. They ended hard, violent lives hard and violently, and they’d deserved better. Dog Face had certainly deserved better than me putting a grenade into him. So did those other poor Kiwi bastards I’d killed.

I balled up my fist and pounded it against my head. There was something wrong here. Something that all the self-pity was covering up. When the drunk arsehole in the street spits in your face you know you have to walk away because it’s not worth it, but you don’t. You don’t because pride gets a hold on you.

Cat. A burst of laser fire in the head. Just under the rim of her helmet. No more Cat. My one-night stand with the killing weapon at her shoulder. Did you forget about your betrayals? Is that why you’re hiding in here or is it just because you know you can’t run from this? You know you’ve already tried to run and that didn’t work.

‘Jakob?’ she asked.

I looked up and her icon was just her. No pre-FHC flapper, no Maiden of Flowers and no Black Annis. She looked scared and vulnerable. I was just about enough of an arsehole to think I liked her that way. I shut down. I was still hiding behind anger and pride.

‘What am I?’ I demanded.

‘We’ve been through this. You have alien nanites running through your body. If you experimented with them you’d have more control. It’s no different from the rest of your cybernetics.’

I started shaking my head before she’d finished.

‘No. What happened wasn’t human.’

‘I have to admit I didn’t think that was going to happen. It was pretty extreme. I thought you’d be able to communicate through just touch or something but you were pretty messed up.’ Even she sounded a little worried.

‘Yeah, but that’s okay because it’s all growing back,’ I said bitterly.

‘Jakob, can’t you be as happy to be alive as the rest of us are?’ She was almost pleading.

‘I don’t think there’s much of Jakob left. Between you and fucking Pagan, I appear to be just a test bed for alien technology.’

‘For fuck’s sake! You’re alive! Why are you the only one who’s not happy about that?! Cat, Mother, Tailgunner, Big Henry, Dog Face, Buck, Gibby and Balor are all dead!’

‘You should have told me!’ I shouted at her. She took a step back, a conditioned reaction from her upbringing, but her face hardened quickly and she stepped forward again pointing a finger at me.

‘Because you would have let me — right? You saved us. What you can do kept us all alive. Are you angry about that as well? I get it. I understand that you’re frightened of becoming Rolleston or Gregor-’

‘I did…’ I said, meaning the possession. I’d become something worse than Gregor.

‘I know — I was there. But what saved you, the reason you’re here, is that alien, or whatever it is, tech in your head. Come to fucking terms.’ She straightened up and crossed her arms. I just stared at her. ‘You know what I think? I think that you’re just scared that you’re going to have to get a proper life if we live through this. I think that if you’d died it would have been easier than taking responsibility for yourself. That’s why you’re skulking in here. I think if you get out it’ll be straight back into the sense booths for you.’

It hurt. It hurt because it was on target.

‘Well, thanks for dropping by. I feel so much better now.’ There was a nasty sense of satisfaction when I saw how upset she looked at her dismissal. I turned away from her.

‘Jakob, we can’t keep doing this,’ she said.

‘I think you’re right.’

‘Talk to me.’ I didn’t answer her. ‘Pagan thinks we can fight Demiurge but…’ I ignored her. I could hear tears in her voice. ‘I’m trying to say goodbye to you.’