War in Heaven

26

I watched my lover die. No. I watched Jakob die. I watched Rolleston tear the heart out of the only man I’d ever loved and crush it. No. Ambassador was gone, so frightened, so lost, so far away from everything he had ever known. We’d used Ambassador as a tool, because of his ability to process vast amounts of information. We were no different to Rolleston and his abuse of Themtech. There was no Themtech, only Them, another race. Ambassador became a weapon, a bridge, part of Pagan to act as a conduit to bring God into the isolated system, to destroy Demiurge and isolate Rolleston. Ambassador had gone, part of me was missing, and Pagan and God were one.

Ambassador was gone and so was Jakob. Both my lovers were dead. I wanted to cut my glass eyes out so I could cry again. I watched Jakob slump forward against Rolleston, this monster, this spoilt child who had done all this, created all this madness.

I watched Josephine Bran back away from her father, looking between him and Jakob’s corpse. You poor woman. How long? I wondered. All the time you served with him on Sirius? Of course you could never say or do anything: you were the Grey Lady. More to the point, Rolleston’s shadow eclipsed you. Bran sat down hard on the floor. Emotion looked foreign on her features. Rolleston turned to her, frowning.

Merle was sitting up watching, his pain under control but helpless without arms. Mudge was sobbing. He could never know. He’d probably kill me. In his own way he had loved Jakob. He wasn’t interested in him in that way but their bonds had run deep. Rannu was frightened. He had every reason to be. He knew from bitter experience that Rolleston lived up to his threats.

Jakob, you fool. He’d made a lot of mistakes. In many ways he was a weak man. He’d done and said a lot of stupid and hurtful things. He kept on trying to do what he thought was best for other people. Not knowing enough to ask them first, to talk to them. But he’d helped me help myself and he never knew when to stop fighting. He tried to be a good friend and he had tried to be as good a man as he knew how. It was enough. I think he was the first person to care for me since my sister died.

Except it was all a lie. Jakob was dead.

I had to control myself.

‘Rolleston?’ I heard myself say. I had to get the shakiness out of my voice. He turned to look at me.

‘You won’t be so lucky. I’ll take my time with the rest of you,’ he said.

There comes a point when threats become superfluous. He wasn’t the first man who thought he’d had power over me.

With a thought I sent the package. All over Rolleston’s recently exorcised fleet, Mudge’s smiling features appeared on IVDs on comms monitors. As tersely and as honestly as possible, Mudge explained to them what had been happening. What had been done to them. His words were supported by the evidence of the monstrosities that the Bush and the Black Squadron frigates had become.

‘You’ve lost,’ I told him.

I think he was unsure for a moment, just a moment, then his features became cruel and confident again. Arrogance — his, mostly — had been the cornerstone of the plan. But arrogance is pretence.

‘How do you work that out? Even now I am transforming the Earth. I control the net.’

I shook my head. ‘Check your net feed.’

Pagan walked across the plain of glass, his staff tapping against its surface. Lightning arced all around him. Anyone or anything which got too close became cinders floating in the virtual air. He glowed blue and white from the inside. He was like a beacon under the burning red sea of the sky. I had to show no reaction as Papa Neon approached what he thought was one of his old friends and was burned to nothing. I felt a strange sense of satisfaction when lightning reached out and destroyed Nuada, because the gods had to know as well. Lessons were being taught. Pagan was God now and God was pissed off. The angels and the other hackers parted for Pagan. He looked magnificent. This was to have been how I died. It would have been a good death, but despite what Jakob said I had wanted to live, but I had wanted all of me to live and he tore part of that away without even asking. No, it wasn’t Jakob who had done that.

‘So?’ Rolleston demanded. ‘He is no match for Demiurge.’ I thought I could detect apprehension in his voice.

The Grey Lady was back on her feet again. She seemed to have recovered and was moving back to her father’s side.

‘That’s the thing though. It’s not one Demiurge, is it? It’s four. Each Demiurge in each system has developed separately. What did you program them for?’

On the plain Pagan/God stood in front of the four black suns and raised his arms high, lifting his staff. Lightning arced out and struck all four of the suns. I heard the Demiurges scream but Pagan/God was just getting their attention.

It was written all over Rolleston’s face. He understood. His arm transformed into a weapon and with a scream of rage he turned and fired at Pagan, whose already burned corpse disappeared in a blast of plasma. The floor of the ship bucked and moved as the plasma turned its biomechanical flesh molten. I felt the heat against my skin and turned away from it.

‘You didn’t get him, Rolleston. He has already gone far beyond your power.’

Pagan/God still stood before the black suns. But then I saw Pagan start to panic. I was pretty sure that gods didn’t panic. Tendrils of black light reached for him from each of the black suns. They wrapped around him, enveloping him, and then tore him apart. I didn’t even flinch. The tendrils withdrew back to the suns.

Rolleston turned to us, smiling, confident, smug again.

‘I made them like me,’ he said in what I’m sure he thought was a sinister manner.

‘Frightened?’ I asked.

His eyes narrowed. He was going to kill us or worse. Might as well try and aggravate him so we can get it over and done with quickly.

‘You taught them how to hate, completely, and then you gave them God-like power. Pagan and God became a virus designed to do one thing, remind them of that. They developed separately with separate experiences. They are individuals now. What would you do if there was more than one of you vying for power?’ I asked.

The first arcs of black light began between the black suns as they attacked each other. I watched Rolleston’s eyes widen. Hate consumed hate in a rage of mutually assured destruction.

‘You’re all alone now,’ I told him, but then he always had been, I suspected.

I watched his features start to change again as the rage spilled out onto his flesh. Good. I don’t fancy spending the rest of my life as some sadist’s plaything again. I hope the hackers are right — I hope there’s another world — and I hope that Jakob and Ambassador are there and maybe the three of us can have a chance at a life free of hatred, pain and madness. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. I closed my eyes. Let’s just get this over and done with.

‘What…?’ Rolleston’s voice sounded small, shocked. I opened my eyes. The dagger, the one that Jakob had been carrying, the one that Rolleston had taken from him and thrown away, was sticking out of his chest. Where his heart should be. Rolleston was staring at Bran. Bran was gazing back. Emotionless. Rolleston collapsed to the ground. Crom Dhu, Black Crom, had done its job — killed the bio-nanites that now made up Rolleston’s form.

The black suns had gone. Then every single computer connected to the net crashed. Dead ships hung in space. Gravity and life support went offline momentarily. Every cyborg, myself included, went blind. Those who needed their systems to live started to die. I was desperately trying to reboot. Pagan/God’s last little trick. I wondered how many thousands of people we’d killed.

The net rebooted. The plain of glass was gone. The sea of fire had gone. The black suns had gone. Pagan/God had gone having saved us all. Pagan had accomplished what Rolleston had failed to do.

The Grey Lady was climbing to her feet. Our gravity hadn’t gone off. We weren’t on a technological ship. This was a living creature now. It was wired differently. I remained sitting. My body felt like a big bruise with added cuts, breaks and burns. My nose was broken and my ribs were cracked — at best. I laughed. MacFarlane wouldn’t have wanted me working for him now. Mudge and Rannu turned to look at me.

Of course there was still the little problem of the Grey Lady and the Black Squadron things surrounding us. As much as I would have liked to beat the shit out of the wee bitch, I knew we didn’t stand a chance. I was willing her to die. She might yet if I got on the net and she stood too close to any automated weapon system, or there were other accidents that could happen to her. Make my man think I was dead and sleep with him, would you?

‘What now?’ I asked her, as willing her dead hadn’t seemed to work.

She was staring at Rolleston’s body. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected — contortions, mutations, something loud and flashy — but he’d just keeled over. He looked really surprised. She looked at me, startled that I’d spoken.

‘I’ve ordered the Black Squadrons to stand down. I’ve told them that Rolleston’s dead. We won’t attack unless we are fired on. I think you should go now.’

‘We’re taking our dead and we’ll need a shuttle to come and get us,’ I said. She glanced over at the monstrosity Cat had become and nodded.

I stood up and limped over to her. She ignored me, just staring down at Rolleston.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘Because he didn’t know enough to be afraid any more,’ she said. She was wrong: all Rolleston had had was fear.

‘That’s not what I mean.’

She turned to look into my eyes. I’d been told that she never looked anyone in the eyes. Hers were grey. She wasn’t as ugly as I thought she’d be. I thought back to Dundee, when the orbital weapons platform had hit the rigs. She could have killed us then. I suspect she’d had many opportunities to kill us.

‘I don’t know. Out of all of them he was just so… human.’

I looked at her for a while and she held my gaze. I nodded and turned away. Mudge had managed to crawl to Merle and was holding him, trying not to hurt his arms. I hugged Mudge fiercely.

‘Ow!’ But he hugged me back.

I could never tell him the truth. I was sure he would kill me if he knew what I’d done. If he knew that Jakob had died in Maw City four months ago, would it make it easier or worse for him?

‘Why didn’t the virus kill you when I stabbed you?’ Rannu asked. The Grey Lady didn’t look at him but there was a ghost of a smile on her face.

‘There’s no biotech in me; I’m just really good.’

Rannu’s eyes widened.