War in Heaven

2

We sat on the benches of the black copter opposite the three walking bruised egos that took the form of lower-echelon spooks. They’d optimistically asked for our weapons as we’d boarded the copter. We’d politely refused, Mudge had hit one, but I’d promised they could have their guns back at the end of the trip.

They’d also been more than a little annoyed when we’d loaded the four-wheel-drive muscle car and the dirt bike into the back of the copter. I mean cars and bikes don’t grow on trees. We’d taken the time and the effort to steal them so we wanted to hold on to them. So the gunmen had spent most of the trip staring at us resentfully.

It was my first trip to America. Or rather my first trip over the border into the America controlled by the American government. I didn’t get much of a chance to see it. Being in the back of some kind of military transport vehicle usually meant I was on my way somewhere to do something stupid, wasteful and dangerous. The journeys to and from said stupid, wasteful and dangerous things were often my only downtime. It had taken me a long time to learn the skill, but I could sleep anywhere, even in the back of these often noisy and always uncomfortable vehicles. I drifted off quite quickly. Careless perhaps, but I knew Rannu and Mudge had my back. They’d wake me when one of them wanted some rest.

Heaven appeared to glow a blue-white colour. It reminded me of something, something dangerous. I wasn’t sure about opening my eyes but I felt good. In fact I felt the best I had in a very, very long time, presumably because I was no longer dying but was in fact dead. On the other hand, I remembered that I’d done an awful lot of bad things in my life, from stealing money from my parents to buy cigarettes when I was ten to killing a lot of people. Some in cold blood and some after I’d tortured them — those were the ones I felt most bad about.

I didn’t feel quite so bad about killing Them. They may have been innocent dupes of the Cabal but they had been trying to kill me at the time, and it’s a lot easier to kill things that look that different from you. Still, it can’t look good on your application for heaven.

Then I decided that I’d been spending too much time around hackers and that I didn’t believe in all that religious shit anyway. So where the fuck was I?

The selfish part of me was happy to see Morag in heaven. Then I started to mourn her death, which I should have done first, piece of shit that I am. Then again, I reminded myself that I didn’t believe in any of that.

‘What?’ I managed. Morag smiled. She did look like an angel. Well, like a non-scary one with short spiky hair. She reached down to touch my face. Her hands felt warm. I felt warm and not at all like I was dying from vacuum exposure. Or being torn apart by Them. Or running out of air. Or just getting round to dying of radiation poisoning, which was something that I’d been meaning to do for the last couple of weeks. I also felt very naked and there were ‘things’ in me.

Mudge proved that I wasn’t in heaven, though hell was possible, by appearing over me, leering. He looked fucking dreadful.

‘The good news is you’re not fucking dead; the bad news is there’s no fucking drink to celebrate with,’ he told me. He sounded angry.

‘You look awful,’ I managed to sort of squeak. It felt like I hadn’t spoken for a very long time.

‘He’s run out of drugs,’ Morag told me.

‘They made this for us?’ I asked again. It was taking a lot of getting used to. ‘Are we prisoners?’

‘More like stuck,’ Morag answered.

I was in a cave in the side of an asteroid close to planetoid size. Across the front of the cave was a membrane made of… well, made of Them. Them being the individual bio-nanites that were the actual aliens rather than the Berserks or Ninjas that we had previously thought to be Them.

This membrane kept us safe from the rigours of vacuum, and other Them-growths were apparently providing air, heating and somewhat unpleasant sanitation facilities. There is nothing quite like having a previously hostile alien species climb up your arse to clean it because they have never had to develop toilet paper. Other growths also provided a kind of unpleasant gruel and a funny-tasting liquid which I think was supposed to be water. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were eating some inert form of Them, perhaps Their dead?

What They couldn’t produce, much to Mudge’s discomfort, was drugs, cigarettes or vodka. He was mostly a sweating, cramping, pale, feverish bundle of bile in the corner of the cave. I wouldn’t have minded a drink and a smoke myself.

The membrane was transparent, which allowed us to appreciate just how far out in space we were. I was looking out on what seemed to be a sort of crossroads. There were four very large asteroids including the one I was currently in. They were either tethered or just connected to one another by tubes like biomechanical Them-growths. There were more growths sticking out at all angles from the asteroids. These looked like a cross between organic high-rise buildings and stalagmites or stalactites, depending on your perspective. I recognised this place now. The crooked Them-structures had reminded me of teeth and I’d christened this area Maw City. We were not far from where we had fought Crom.

We used to think that these structures were Their habitats but now we knew it was just Them. Everything seemed to have a function in Their society. Their roots were deep in the asteroid. They somehow drew out the raw materials from them. With energy harnessed from the system’s twin stars They broke down the raw materials to provide the resources necessary to make Themselves into these awe-inspiring structures.

Massive tendrils snaked between the asteroids, the growths and the hundreds of Them-ships moving through this apparent nexus point. I watched as one moved in front of me, completely obscuring my view. The tendrils moved anything from Berserks up to frigate-sized ships around. It was one of these things I’d seen grab Morag.

The whole place was crawling with Them. There were Berserks, Walkers and other things that we had previously thought to be vehicles. I also recognised a lot of the ship configurations I saw from footage of fleet actions.

If I strained and used the magnification on my optics I could see beyond Maw City. There were fields of a coral-like substance, where everything from Berserks to dreadnoughts were being grown and born. Deeper still I could see the cored hollow remains of exploited asteroids.

All the Them-forms we were used to seeing were black — combat forms, I guessed. But many here were white and had a pale-blue bioluminescent glow that I had become used to seeing in the honeycombed energy matrices of Their engines. It was the same bioluminescence that lit our little cavern. I had always thought it beautiful. Not that I could have told anyone. Maybe Morag, though even she’d take the piss.

The growths handling the air made it feel like there was a warm wind constantly blowing through the cavern. Apparently getting the heating, water and temperature right had been touch and go, initially. When I had been dying. There was kind of a lot to take in.

I looked at my hand. There were no scabs or sores, just healthy armoured flesh and boosted muscle. I felt great, no nausea. In fact it had been a long time since I had felt this good. Though I would have liked a cigarette.

‘So let me see if I understand you properly. They ate all the unhealthy flesh and replaced or regrew it, at a cellular level. Is that correct?’ I asked again. I heard Pagan sigh. I didn’t really blame him, I had asked that question a lot recently.

He was sitting leaning against the wall in his inertial armour suit. He had his staff fully assembled and it lay across his lap.

Pagan was in his forties and one of the oldest people I knew who wasn’t a member of a powerful secret government of arseholes. He was thin, his skin weathered and covered in various spiralling tattoos. Some of the tattoos were implanted circuitry to aid the ugly utilitarian integral computer that stuck out of half his skull. Unruly orange dreadlocks sprouted out from the other half. He was currently scratching at his scalp, running his hand through his dreads.

‘Yes. We have similar treatments, but they tend to be only available to the wealthy,’ Pagan explained. Again.

‘So am I an alien?’ I asked again.

‘Undoubtedly,’ Mudge groaned. He was lying on the floor, which was covered, in a soft, comfy, moss-like material. He was wearing only a pair of white boxers with hearts all over them. He got up onto all fours and started crawling towards the sanitation growth.

‘No,’ Morag said. She also sounded agitated. She was wearing her underwear and a T-shirt and sitting on a rock also covered in the moss. I couldn’t help but be distracted by her shapely legs. She was small, but the exertions of our time together had hardened her up. That could be seen in the tone of her muscles and sadly in her features as well. It did not detract from how attractive I found her.

Her hair had been shaved off so that the sophisticated integral computer she used for hacking could be implanted. Her hair was growing back but was still short, though it did cover most of the implant. The integral computer had been a high-end civilian model provided by Vicar so it was not as obtrusive as the military model sticking out of Pagan’s skull.

I missed her eyes. After Rolleston and the Grey Lady had blown the side out of the media node, the explosive decompression had permanently blinded her. She had had her eyes replaced with cybernetic ones. They provided her with similar capabilities to the rest of us — magnification, thermographics, low light, flash compensation, etc. Her eyes were civilian models designed to look like normal ones. They had been modelled after pictures of her own eyes provided by Mudge, but I could still tell the difference. When you started replacing bits of yourself it had a cost.

‘You’re still you,’ she reassured me. This was a sore point with her. After all, she was carrying around the information ghost of Ambassador in her neural cyberware and had been accused of being compromised by the alien on a number of occasions. I’d even done it during one of my frequent outbreaks of arseholery.

‘Thank God!’ Mudge shouted dramatically before collapsing face first into the sanitation growth. We all grimaced as he started to throw up the food substitute they’d been giving us. I was trying not to think of it as necro-gruel.

‘It’s astonishing to think that we actually managed to save an entire alien species from assimilation by Crom,’ Pagan mused as he watched Mudge vomit.

‘Is he going to be okay?’ I asked Rannu. The quiet ex-Ghurkha was the closest thing we had to a medic. Mudge was annoying but he was my oldest and closest friend who was not dead. Also he’d never duped me into coming to Sirius to infect Them with the Crom slave virus. Though in fairness to Gregor that was more Rolleston’s fault than his.

Rannu shrugged. He was stripped to the waist, his compact and powerful frame covered in sweat from his near-constant working out. That was probably the real reason he beat me in New York. He never stopped training.

‘It’s withdrawal,’ he said. He still wore his kukri, the curved machete-like fighting knife of the Ghurkhas, at his hip. As he turned to grab a cleaning form to rub himself with I caught a glimpse of the stylised tattoo of Kali on his back. It had been done when he had been working undercover back on Earth.

‘From what?’ I asked. Actually meaning which drug. Rannu gave this some thought.

‘Everything, I think. It shouldn’t kill him because of his enhancements but he is going to be in a lot of discomfort.’

Knowing Mudge, that meant that the rest of us were going to be in a lot of discomfort as well. I still wanted a smoke.

‘So I’m a hybrid like Gregor?’ I asked. Morag opened her mouth to answer but Rannu surprised me by beating her to it.

‘More like Rolleston.’

‘Nice,’ I said grimly. It made sense though. I felt stronger, faster and healthier than I ever had. Hell, I was looking forward to sparring with Rannu. I’d had so much of my flesh cut away and replaced with machinery and now what flesh I had left had been replaced.

Maybe I had died. Maybe all that was left was a sophisticated, or not, Themtech simulacrum that felt a little like me.

‘So let me see if I understand this properly…’

Even Rannu sighed and shifted to make himself more comfortable.

Mudge nudged me awake. I could hear the whine of the copter’s engines straining. I looked out of one of the windows. We seemed to be sinking into some huge vertical tube of concrete and metal. It looked old. Maybe even pre-FHC.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I think it’s an old missile silo,’ Rannu said. ‘For nukes.’ That woke me up. I looked for confirmation from the three bruised egos in suits in front of us. They just glowered.

‘You know it could just be a coincidence. Our invitation to New Mexico and God thinking that Morag is here, I mean,’ Mudge said. I ignored him. He lit a cigarette to spite me.

‘My comms is down,’ Rannu said quietly. I tried mine. Nothing. Not even short-range person-to-person between the three of us.

‘What’s going on?’ I demanded from the three spooks. They said nothing. ‘You wanted us here. Do we have to fucking beat it out of you?’ These were truly exasperating people.

‘Have you got any religion?’ the one in the middle asked. I just gaped at him.

‘Are you asking if we’ve got anything with God on it?’ Mudge enquired.

He nodded.

‘What if we have?’ I asked.

‘You can’t go in,’ the middle one answered. I was beginning to see what was going on here.

‘It’s a comms quarantine. You’re trying to keep God out.’ Rannu voiced my suspicions.

‘And how’re you going to stop us?’ born-again-hard Mudge asked.

‘They probably just won’t let us in,’ Rannu suggested.

‘Let’s just get this over with,’ I muttered.

We didn’t have much on us as most of our comms stuff was internal and one of God’s parameters was to be non-invasive as far as people’s personnel cyberware went. I had nothing. I just contacted God through my internal comms when I wanted to speak to him. Rannu had some kind of medium-range comms booster and Mudge had bits and pieces of media tech. They had to leave all of this behind in the copter.

‘And no pictures,’ one of the failed gunmen told Mudge.

‘Of course not,’ Mudge said with false sincerity. We stepped out of the copter.

If I hadn’t seen Spokes or fleet carriers or the Dog’s Teeth the scale of the place would have been quite impressive. As it was, it was a big concrete hole in the ground.

We walked across the landing pad towards a set of blast doors. There were more suited types with guns waiting for us. One was walking towards us, his arm outstretched.

‘Hold it right there, gentleman,’ he said. Mudge grabbed his outstretched arm, twisted it round and wrist-locked him so painfully the guy sank to the ground. I shook my head as the rest of the security contingent raised their weapons and started shouting.

‘Mudge,’ I said over the shouting, ‘he was being polite.’

‘I didn’t like his tone.’

‘He called us gentlemen. Let him go.’ Mudge gave this some thought but relented. The guy stood up, glaring at us and rubbing his wrist.

‘Are you a reasonable person?’ I asked him.

‘I was until about thirty seconds ago,’ he muttered, but he was gesturing at his security detail to calm down.

‘You want our weapons?’ I asked.

‘Obviously.’

‘It’s not going to happen. Besides which, you can’t disarm cybernetic weapons systems, and it would be no problem for us to take your weapons from you inside if we wanted to and use them. So you want us here, or Sharcroft does?’ He nodded. ‘Well, it depends on how much he wants to see us.’ He gave this some thought, or more likely he was receiving instructions.

‘We need to check you for information contamination,’ he said, relenting. I nodded. His tech guys approached and started waving various sensors at us.

‘Are you going to kill him?’ the security guy asked.

‘Not sure yet,’ I mused.

Through the blast doors was a large chamber with a low ceiling. The walls, floor and ceiling were covered in some kind of metal mesh. We were walking on a raised wooden platform. The room was full of what I recognised as servers in liquid coolant tanks, a lot of them. I did not know a lot about IT but even I knew that there were vast amounts of processing power in here. There was also a lot of solid-state memory.

Interspersed among all the hardware were various bits of institutional office furniture. People in one-piece suits were sat at desks, many of them tranced in, most with some form of visible integral computer system and all hard-wired into the hardware. None of them were using wireless links.

Many of the available surfaces had liquid-crystal thinscreens stuck to them. Though not the walls or the ceilings, I noticed. They, along with several detailed holographic displays, were showing information about the colonies. Or at least that’s what it looked like to me.

Mudge made a whistling noise as he blew air through his teeth.

‘This whole room is a Faraday cage,’ he said. It was a big room. ‘It’s designed to keep all surveillance out.’

It wasn’t just the mesh; I saw jamming and various other electronic countermeasures and counter-surveillance tech strategically placed around the room.

‘Lot of trouble to go to, to be free of God,’ Rannu commented.

‘Welcome to Limbo, gentlemen.’ It was the sort of voice that I associated with energetic old people. I knew this from old vizzes as I didn’t know any old people. It also sounded amplified.

I turned around to look at the villain of the piece. He looked the part, like the upper torso of a corpse in a high-tech armoured bath-chair. The chair had six sturdy metal legs rather than wheels and covered his legs. He didn’t move and barely seemed to be breathing despite the assistance of the life-support systems on the chair.

‘Though I prefer to think of it as a haven for atheists.’ The cheerful voice was coming from speakers built into the chair. I guessed this was Sharcroft. He looked dead long enough to be a Cabal old boy.

‘Why are you still alive?’ I asked.

‘You mean why didn’t the mob get me, Sergeant — or is it Mr Douglas now? I made a deal obviously.’

‘No. I mean after you’d lived out your natural lifespan in comfort bought with our suffering, why didn’t you just let yourself die?’

‘You mean what am I afraid of? I’m not the only one here who should be dead, am I?’ That was bad. He knew what I was. Of course he knew. That was the job of guys like him. I resisted the urge to start looking around for the dissection table.

‘Its over though,’ Mudge said. ‘Your rejuvenation through Themtech is not going to happen. You’re effectively dead anyway. Do everyone a favour and switch yourself off.’

‘Did you really only come here to revive old arguments?’

Mudge nodded towards me. ‘He came to see his bird.’ I resisted the urge to shoot Mudge. Just.

‘What’s Limbo for?’ Rannu asked before I could ask about Morag. ‘I mean other than hiding from God.’

‘Well, as you have pulled the teeth of every intelligence agency in the system-’

‘And wrecked your sordid little secret government,’ I added.

‘Quite a big secret government actually, Mr Douglas. You all but pushed the more clandestine facets of government back to using paper and filing cabinets.’

‘So this is a secure site for dirty little secrets so you sleazy little fuckers can start again?’ I asked.

He actually sighed. ‘If you like. It’s one of many made up of what we managed to salvage from your act of wanton terrorism. This particular site has one function.’ He paused. I think it was supposed to be dramatic. We waited. His voice sounded irritated when he started again. ‘It is the clandestine part of the war against the Cabal.’

We gave this some thought.

‘What silly twat put you in charge of it?’ Mudge asked.

‘I can assure you,’ and again he sounded irritated, ‘that there is quite a lot of oversight involved. After all, who better to know the machinations of the Cabal than a former member.’

‘What? You’re pissed off that Rolleston and Cronin fucked off with all your toys and left you here to die?’ I asked. On the corpse in the chair I thought I may have detected a slight change in expression.

‘Obviously.’

‘Well, best of luck and I’d advise you not to cross my path again,’ I told him. ‘I’d like to go home now.’

‘Don’t you want to finish the job you started?’ he asked.

‘Your mess — you clean it up,’ I told him. It wasn’t strictly true of course.

‘What did you want from us?’ Rannu asked.

‘We’re not taking this seriously, are we?’ Mudge asked. ‘I mean I know we do a lot of stupid things but he’s one of the bad guys.’

‘There’s a number of ways you can help us. Particularly you, Mr Douglas.’

I tried to ignore the relish in his voice but couldn’t help reaching up and touching my assault shotgun’s handgrip.

‘Like what?’ Here it comes.

‘I believe you’re hybrid? We believe that many of Rolleston’s Black Squadrons are either hybrids or otherwise augmented with Them biotech.’

‘What do you mean you believe? You fucking know because you were one!’ Mudge was getting angry.

‘So what if I am?’ I asked.

‘Well the data we could get from-’

‘Experimenting on me?’

I remembered Gregor’s warped features in his sealed chamber in the Cabal’s genetics lab deep in the Atlantis Spoke. I took a step towards Sharcroft, my hand now round the shotgun’s grip. Sharcroft didn’t give, but I was sure I could hear clicks and humming coming from his insectile chair. It was the sound of weapons systems readying themselves.

‘I fucking think not.’

‘You’re being selfish. You may have the answer we need.’

‘I’m being selfish? I didn’t start a war with an alien species just so I could become one of the living dead! And while we’re on the subject, what was the thinking behind that?’

‘I cannot justify the unjustifiable.’

‘What? That’s it? Fancy talk for I know I’m a cunt?’ I demanded.

‘We’re not talking about anything invasive-’

‘Would a fifty-calibre sabot round in the head be an emphatic enough no for you?’ I asked. I was genuinely in awe of this guy’s nerve.

‘Even if your capabilities are anything like Rolleston’s -’ now there was a thought ‘- we still have enough resources here to compel you to help.’

‘An achievement you’d enjoy posthumously, well more posthumously,’ Mudge told him. Rannu was glancing around, assessing the area, readying himself. I should have been doing the same but I was too angry.

‘There are other ways you could help,’ Sharcroft said after quite a tense pause.

‘Such as?’ Rannu surprised me by asking.

‘We’re sending people with your capabilities into the colonies to gather intelligence on the Black Squadron’s forces.’

‘Deep-penetration recces?’ I asked despite myself, I was so surprised. I did the sums. Depending on how quickly they had got themselves sorted out they could have put boots on the ground and, allowing for the speed that information travels across interstellar distances, i.e. the speed of a ship, they could already have info from the colonies. They might actually know what’s going on there.

‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Wouldn’t they be comms blind? They must have released Demiurge into the net in each of the colonial systems.’ That meant that any attempt to communicate would be compromised by a program with all of God’s power but none of its hands-off charm. If Demiurge worked then it meant that Rolleston, Cronin and their lackeys had control of every electronic system connected to the net. That meant just about every electronic system. This would make it difficult to operate, as even interpersonal communications would compromise them, let alone ship-to-ship or ship-to-surface comms.

‘According to our models Demiurge has indeed been released.’

‘Models?’ I demanded.

‘You haven’t heard back from anyone, have you?’ Rannu asked quietly.

‘Not as yet,’ Sharcroft confirmed.

‘Because it’s a fucking suicide mission,’ I spat.

These people made me sick. Come up with these bullshit ideas without any thought of the cost at the sharp end. Special forces operators weren’t cowards, far from it, but we deserved a chance at survival.

That aside, I was appalled at the sheer power of Demiurge and in turn the power handed over to Rolleston and Cronin. They had completely sewn up the four colonial systems.

‘Have you heard anything at all from the colonies since Rolleston escaped?’ Rannu again.

‘The only thing we’ve had from the colonies are ships that have come back with Demiurge in their systems,’ he said.

I was slightly suspicious of how open this guy was being with classified information. It was almost like he was sure that we were part of the team.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘God fought off Demiurge’s attack and the craft were destroyed.’

I was impressed. Good for you, Pagan and Morag. Then I started wondering where Morag was again.

‘Well there’s your answer then,’ I told him.

‘It’s not that simple,’ he replied. It never is, I thought. ‘God won because Demiurge only had the ships’ systems, with their limited memory and processing power, behind it. God had much larger resources.’

‘So Morag was right. Size is everything,’ Mudge cracked.

‘Time and a place, Mudge,’ I said. Mudge took the hint. ‘Well this is a fascinating insight into how much you’re fucking up the war effort but I… we’re retired. Best of luck.’ I turned to leave and then turned back. ‘How do we get out of here?’

‘Do you not want to get back at Rolleston?’ Sharcroft asked. His chair was rocking backwards and forwards on its six legs.

‘Do you even know where he is?’

‘We think-’

‘No! You’re fucking guessing. System maybe? Is he with the fleet? Is he on the ground? If so, which planet? Even if you know the planet they’re still fucking big things to search? Do you know exactly where he is? I’ll settle for a city. Because then all we’d have to do is infiltrate a planet, comms blind, fight our way past all his Themtech-enhanced super-troopers and then kill someone who can survive sustained fire from a Retributor. We’re retired.’

‘Assassination, sabotage, fostering resistance, getting the truth-’

‘Don’t say truth!’ I roared, completely losing it. Now everyone in the chamber not tranced in was staring at us. Many of the security types were fingering their weapons nervously. ‘It’s a fucking swear word in your mouth!’

‘Er… Jakob?’ Rannu said. I ignored him.

‘I said no and I mean go and fuck yourself!’

‘Hello, Jakob,’ Morag said. The blood or whatever I had in what was left of my veins froze. I turned to look at her.

She was wearing one of those ridiculous one-piece white suits. She was the only one who looked good in it. She was genuinely pretty, not attractive, not beautiful but pretty, though she looked older and harder than she had when I’d first met her not more than three months ago. She’d kept her hair short. It was spiky, almost boyish now. I tried not to wonder if it was a reaction to the forced femininity of her previous life as a rig prostitute.

I was so pleased to see her. I was so fucking angry to find her here.

Pagan was standing next to her. He looked ridiculous in his white one-piece. He also looked lost without his staff. It was as if they’d tried to rob him of his identity, his stature, by removing his neo-Druidic props and forcing him to dress in institutional chic.

I felt resentment towards him. This was what he’d wanted — influence over Morag. I realised that was irrational jealousy. I was being a prick. If it hadn’t been for Pagan, Crom would’ve won in the Dog’s Teeth.

Rannu nodded at them both. Morag smiled. She seemed genuinely pleased to see him. Another stab of jealousy.

‘Hi, Morag, Pagan,’ Mudge said, admittedly guardedly, but it was a good model of how to behave in the situation.

‘What the fuck are you doing?!’ I screamed at her. I mean Pagan was here too, but this was of course her fault. Besides, I’d never slept with Pagan.

‘Trying to help! What the fuck’s it got to do with you?!’ Her Dundonian accent became broader as, like me, she went from guarded neutral to screaming straight away.

‘He -’ I pointed at Sharcroft ‘- is the fucking enemy!’

‘Set a fox to catch a fox,’ Pagan said. Even he didn’t even sound like he believed it.

‘Shut up, Pagan!’ I shouted, barely glancing at him before turning back to a furious-looking Morag. ‘What are you trying to do? Ensure that everything we did was for nothing! Was meaningless?!’

I was aware of Pagan, Rannu and Mudge all shifting, making themselves comfortable.

‘Oh, that’s right. Don’t fucking bother finding out what we’re doing; just assume the worst and start shouting! Presumably at some point you’ll call me a whore!’

‘Oh look, everyone. Jakob and Morag are fighting,’ Mudge said. ‘Wow, that almost never happens.’

I glanced round. Everyone else was looking bored and irritated. The anger was starting to drain from me.

‘Now I know you’re both Scottish,’ Mudge continued, ‘but not all communication has to be conducted by screaming at each other.’

‘Well, as entertaining as this is, we have work to do. So if you’re not going to help you’ll have to leave,’ Sharcroft said.

‘Are you really going to turn your back on it all?’ Morag asked, more softly now. I could still hear the anger and the resolve in her voice.

‘Turn my back? That’s not fair. Don’t you see that this is just starting the whole mess all over again?’

‘Mr Douglas, do you not think that the Cabal, as you so prosaically called us, has agents on Earth? With your background can you not see the need for secrecy, for operational security?’ Sharcroft asked.

‘For petty empire-building?’ Mudge asked.

‘For fighting a war,’ Pagan said.

‘So God’s over and done with. On to the next thing, aye, Pagan? Drag Morag down with you because you know she’s better, but reflected glory and all that. You fucking sell-out.’ I was just lashing out now.

Pagan looked like I’d slapped him.

‘That’s not fair, man,’ Mudge said.

‘Who exactly do you expect to save you?’ Sharcroft’s modulated electronic voice asked.

‘I never expected to be saved,’ I told the living spider-corpse. It sounded hollow even to me.

‘That’s a cop-out,’ Morag said quietly.

‘So what should I do — turn myself over for dissection or just fuck off and die under an alien sun? Any battle’s going to be fleet and electronic anyway, probably followed by surface insurgency. You forget, I’ve done all this. Besides, aren’t you and Pagan just telling us that it doesn’t matter; there’s always going to be some prick in charge?’ I nodded towards Sharcroft.

‘Didn’t you say it was all about personal responsibility? We helped make this situation; we have to help fix it,’ she said.

‘How? By defecting?’

‘You know we haven’t done that.’

‘The sad fact is, Mr Douglas,’ Sharcroft began again, ‘that I’m very good at this sort of thing. I am the kind of cunt -’ he seemed to savour the word ‘- that you need. As for my previous associations, I don’t care whether you judge me. I don’t have to justify myself to you. You will never understand my motivations because you have never had any power and so cannot understand that once you’ve had it, it becomes very important to maintain it. You’ll do anything.’

‘That sounds like a justification to me,’ Mudge said. ‘Though not a very good one.’

‘No. I’m simply explaining that we are so different we’re never going to see each other’s perspective, so arguing about it is utterly pointless. If it’s any consolation, from your perspective I would now seem to be on the side of the angels.’

‘Oh, that’s exactly what it seems like to me,’ I said sarcastically.

‘Did you really think that with the threat of Rolleston and Cronin looming that the military, industrial and intelligence complex would just dismantle itself? Did you not think that they would adapt to the new circumstances, as difficult as you all, rather foolishly, made it? Can you not see the requirement for us?’

‘There are ways and means…’ I said falteringly. ‘Look, you guys started the whole thing.’

‘Irrelevant except perhaps as testimony at my war crimes trial. We still have a situation to deal with. The question is, are you going to help or are you going to abrogate responsibility?’

‘To work with the likes of you?’

‘Do you think I’m happy about that? I think you’re meddlesome cretins in way over your heads, lashing out because you don’t understand what’s happening around you and too frightened to make the hard decisions. But we all have to play the hand we’re dealt, Mr Douglas.’

‘Things have to change,’ I told him. On the one hand I completely believed this; on the other I realised how empty it sounded.

‘So change them,’ Morag said. ‘Don’t run away.’ Maybe she was right. No, she was right but I just didn’t think I had any more to give. I don’t think any of us did, her and Pagan included. I also didn’t think they had any practical solutions, just death sentences.

‘If only it was that easy,’ I said to her, and then to Sharcroft: ‘Thanks for the job offer but go and fuck yourself, parasite.’

‘And the rest of you?’ Sharcroft asked. Divide and conquer.

‘I’m with the overwrought one,’ Mudge said. Rannu didn’t say anything.

‘We’re done. How do we get out of here?’ I asked.

‘We’re not done. We’ve got something to do, and you guys are coming with us,’ Mudge told Pagan and Morag. Pagan nodded, getting it before I did.

‘They have-’ Sharcroft began.

‘Be quiet,’ Rannu said. He’d been looking thoughtful throughout the conversation but the menace in his tone was unmistakable. Morag looked as confused as I did. I should have known better.

I think we were in Old Mexico. Either that or we were in part of New Mexico that looked like Old Mexico. Anyway it looked like I’d imagined Mexico looked. That could have just been for the tourists, though tourists in this part of town would have to be quite intrepid and well armed.

We were in the upstairs private room of a bar, sorry, cantina. It had a small wrought-iron balcony that looked out over a crowded street of revellers, which is a fancy word for drunk people, the service industries that survive them and the predators that prey on them. It was a pleasantly warm night.

‘To Vicar, Balor, Gibby and Buck!’ Mudge shouted. He was halfway to standing on the table. ‘Better men than us by dint of having the common courtesy to die doing stupid things!’ He knocked back his shot of tequila and then chased it with a long draw from a bottle of the same.

‘To Vicar, Balor, Buck and Gibby!’ we all shouted and knocked back our shots. I grimaced. I struggled with tequila, conceptually. As far as I knew it was rotting whisky. Why would you purposefully let whisky rot? It didn’t make sense. Also I didn’t like the way the worm in the bottle glowed. In fact I didn’t like that there was a worm at all.

Mudge fell off the table. We laughed at his pain. He tried to get up but Rannu knocked his leg out from under him.

‘Don’t do that,’ Mudge slurred. ‘Spensive.’ I think he meant his prosthetic legs. When you’re a front-line, or in our case behind-lines, soldier you don’t think in terms of the grand scheme. You think about small objectives — kill someone/something, disrupt a supply line, extract another squad in trouble. You assume that you’re part of a bigger picture and that what you’re doing will help, despite the doubts. Sitting there and thinking that you successfully saved an entire alien race from being assimilated by bad guys was just too big to get your mind around.

Getting back in-system and not ending up in prison, or in my case being dissected, had taken up everyone’s attention, and then we’d each had things that we’d felt had to be taken care of. In doing so we’d forgotten that the four people mostly responsible for our success, the four people who were responsible for us being alive, needed a send-off. They needed remembrance.

Don’t get me wrong, if Pagan hadn’t figured out Crom’s betrayal then we would’ve been dead, and if Morag hadn’t successfully established contact with Them we’d definitely have been dead. Vicar had sacrificed himself to try and give Morag and I enough time to escape from Rolleston. Buck gave his life fighting the Cabal, killed by the Grey Lady. Balor had kept Crom — I wouldn’t think of that abomination as my friend Gregor — busy long enough for Gibby to fly the ship into it.

Rannu and I had largely been spectators. Admittedly spectators fighting for our lives against Them. Mudge had been recording it all for posterity. He’d made them heroes. A difficult word to take seriously, particularly in the military, but it applied here.

So here we were to send them off, their wake. I suspect they deserved a global celebration. What they got was the five of us drunk out of our minds telling the funniest stories about them we could remember. Mudge told us about the time he’d been hiding in New York. Balor had a meeting with someone from the American government. To make the government man nervous he’d taken the meeting naked, sporting a huge erection in a room completely covered in thinscreens showing footage from wildlife vizzes of fish spawning. Mudge and I told the story about Vicar on the Santa Maria giving me the lock burner he’d hidden in his arse. I told a story I’d heard second-hand about Buck and Gibby accidentally bombing a Them surface-to-air emplacement with live chickens meant for a dinner being held by some hopelessly optimistic officers.

Everyone had a story of some kind, mainly about Balor, who was better known. Many of them were probably pure myth. Mudge and I knew a reasonable amount about Buck and Gibby, and we all had something to say about our time with them. We got more drunk.

I hoped that the Hard Luck Commancheros had done the same for Buck and Gibby back in Crawling Town. I also hoped that the pirate nation of New York had done the same for Balor. Though reports out of New York pointed to widespread conflict between factions that had previously been held together by Balor’s sheer force of personality.

It was Vicar I felt sorry for. He’d never seemed to have any people around him. I’d only known him on the Santa Maria, the trial and then in Dundee. It had mainly been a business relationship. He had provided me with tech I needed when I could afford it. I didn’t think his desperate congregation was going to miss him. Maybe the food and the clothes he gave out, but not all the hellfire and damnation. Did he have any family that would miss him? Did they know? Maybe it was something I should look into. I could tell them just what sort of person the mad old bastard really was. Make them proud. If they cared.

‘The sun’s coming up!’ Mudge announced, and the night did seem to be developing a red tinge to it.

‘You’re not thinking of quitting now,’ Pagan managed after a number of attempts. ‘Lightweight,’ he added.

‘Nope. This wake has moved into the next phase. The one I like to call whore phase!’ Mudge announced. ‘Though I have in the past called it sexually transmitted disease phase.’ Mudge tried standing up but failed. He turned to look at Morag. ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t mean you.’ We all stopped.

Morag glared at him but then cracked up laughing. She reached over and tugged at his cheek. ‘S’all right, love. I’m not your type, am I?’

‘Nope, not enough penises,’ Mudge agreed. Rannu, who was quiet when drunk — at least I hoped he was drunk, the amount he’d had — seemed to be puzzling this comment through.

‘How many penises does Morag have?’ he finally asked. We fell about laughing. Rannu just looked confused. We’d had a dangerous amount to drink.

‘The question is: how many penises does he want?’ Pagan suggested.

‘All of them! All the penises!’ Mudge shouted. There was cheering from the street. ‘Besides, Morag and Jakob have to go and have angry make-up sex!’

‘What! Now wait…’ I managed, but Morag just grabbed me.

‘C’mon.’

There was an urgency to it. A need, for both of us. It wasn’t angry but nor was it tender. She rode me as I held her up, her back against the wall of the aging, rotting room at the top of the cantina , the glass door to the balcony open to the dawn air. Maybe it was passion — difficult to remember. She led the way. She was in control. She had to be.

Because afterwards she sobbed and shook in my arms as I tried to fight off the hangover I so richly deserved. It was the frustrated sobbing of someone who can’t shed tears because their eyes are metal and plastic now. I held her. I said nothing. This wasn’t just the normal emotional retardation of a male not knowing what to do when his girl’s upset. I knew there was nothing I could say.

I knew what was wrong. We’d talked about it when we’d finally had the chance to in the Dog’s Teeth. When we’d finally had the chance to do the talking bit that normally comes first with people in a relationship. Talking was difficult when people are trying to kill you all the time.

I think she liked sex. I think she liked me enough to want to have sex with me, for whatever that was worth, but she’d spent so much of her life being used. She said at times that she’d felt little more than an appliance, the cheap alternative to sense booths. That made sex complicated for her. She wanted it; she liked it; but then doing it made her feel cheap. Doing it reminded her of so much bad stuff. What could you say to that? All I could do was hold her.

It didn’t help that when we had been really intimate, when we’d shared a sense link, felt what the other felt, I’d fucked it up by getting scared and acting like a prick. In my defence it was because the alien essence that lived in Morag’s headware had taken that moment to enter my head and change my dreams. That still didn’t help Morag or excuse my behaviour.

I held her until she stopped crying. I guess I was surprised that she was still able to be this vulnerable with me after all the bad things I’d said to her in the past. Then it occurred to me — if not me then who? Then we made love again. This time more tenderly. This time she didn’t cry. Afterwards she fell asleep. I resisted sleep for as long as I could. I wanted to watch her, and sometimes sleep wasn’t so good for me. Eventually I drifted off.

Morag had been training with Rannu. Mainly physical training but some hand-to-hand stuff, the kind the Regiment taught us as well as the Muay Thai that he excelled at. She was still hot and sweaty, my arms wrapped around her as we looked out over Maw City. It was like a bioluminescent termite mound but somehow beautiful at the same time. It was difficult to explain. Their industry was somehow hypnotic. The others were further back in the cave.

Pagan and Rannu were discreetly keeping their distance and Mudge was too ill to be obnoxious. Actually that wasn’t true. He was too ill to move; he was never too ill to be obnoxious. This was as close to privacy as we were going to get. I was frustrated because this was the first time in a long time we weren’t in immediate danger.

Morag took the metal of my right hand in her much smaller one. The tactile sensors in the hand sent messages to my brain, a simulation of touch. With my real hand, albeit a hand that had armour and enhanced muscle under the skin, I stroked her hair.

‘Why don’t you train me?’ she asked.

‘Laziness, and Rannu’s better than me,’ I told her.

‘Not because you don’t want me to know this stuff?’

‘You need to know this stuff, I guess, but I’m not keen for you to be in harm’s way, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You don’t have to be protective all the time,’ she said, but there was no sharpness in her tone.

Eventually I think I worked out what she was getting at.

‘I have faith in your abilities, if that’s what you mean,’ I told her.

She smiled. See? Given time I could think of things to say that weren’t just going to upset her.

We sat there for a while watching the industry of the alien habitat. All the zero-G manoeuvring looked so graceful, much more so than the clumsy machines we utilised. I guessed that’s what came of evolving in vacuum.

‘What are They like?’ I asked after we’d sat in silence for a while. Morag gave this some thought.

‘Very different. They think as one and They just haven’t developed certain things that we take for granted.’

‘Like what?’

‘They don’t understand that we don’t think as one like Them. They can’t see how some of us would act against others of us. The biggest problem I had was trying to explain what happened with Crom. Even the concept of the Cabal is beyond Them. They just don’t get duplicity at all.’

‘That would explain their tactics during the war.’

‘There’s something very soothing about communication with Them. Something warm. Like this place.’

‘Womb-like?’ I wasn’t sure where that had come from. Again she gave it some thought before answering.

‘I wouldn’t know.’ She sounded distant.

She was quiet for a while.

‘I can trance in, you know,’ she said. I looked down at her and found her looking back at me, searching for my response.

‘Yeah?’ I managed. I wasn’t sure what to say.

‘I mean, I haven’t but I know I can.’ She looked away from me.

‘Have you heard of Project Spiral?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘Vicar worked on it. It was the American and British governments’ attempt to hack what they thought was Their comms net,’ she said.

‘But it wasn’t, was it? It’s Them, Their minds.’

‘Yes, but it’s Their comms net as well. They have the equivalent of biotechnological telepathy.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. You could argue we have that with integral comms links,’ I said.

‘I don’t think it’s the same. I’m going to trance in. With my own systems and Ambassador’s help I should be able to do it.’

‘You know what happened in Operation Spiral?’ I asked, sounding calmer than I felt.

‘No, do you? I’d be interested, but God’s so far away. I know the results of what happened. Everyone brain-burned or mad. Vicar-’

‘Was the best of them,’ I finished for her.

‘But they didn’t know that it was Their mind and they hadn’t been allowed in.’

I wanted to talk her out of it or at least tell her to be careful. I didn’t. I was sort of sure she knew what she was doing though this was uncharted territory for all of us. How did an ex-Rigs hooker end up on Earth’s first contact team? Okay, not first contact, but still.

‘You can come. I can piggyback you.’ She seemed to be serious. She looked cross when I started laughing. I wasn’t laughing at her; I was laughing at the ridiculous, mind-blowing scope of the thing.

‘Me in an alien mind? I think Mudge would be a better person for the job.’

‘I don’t want Mudge with me.’ She sounded a little put out.

‘I just…’ I struggled for the words to try and say what I meant. ‘All I’ve ever really wanted is to not be hungry, or in pain or frightened, or so tired all the time. I don’t think I want much — to make a living in a way where I don’t have to get shot at or kill other people, like my dad did after he was discharged.’ Before some rich bastard killed him because he could. ‘Then a good book, some Miles Davis in the background and a dram.’ Morag was watching me intently but also smiling. ‘Now you’re talking about going surfing in the mind of an alien race who I’ve spent all my adult life trying to kill, and they’ve been doing likewise to me. I’ve no frame of reference for this.’

‘Are you frightened of it?’ she asked. This I had to think about. I should be, I really should be.

‘No,’ I finally said.

‘Isn’t this how it’s done?’

‘What?’

‘Peace. You try to understand the other guy.’ It was quite a naive thing to say. It helped remind me of our age difference. Something I tried not to think too much about in case I didn’t like the answers I came up with.

‘I don’t think so. I think powerful people make deals. Your way would be better but difficult to do after a war because we’re so used to thinking of the other guys as less than human.’

‘My way would be better if we had done it before the war.’

‘So they’ll just let you in for the asking?’ I said, changing the subject.

‘I won’t be the first.’

I looked down at her to see her grinning mischievously at me. It was a hint of the childhood she’d never had.

‘What do you mean?’

Her expression changed. ‘Are you all right with this now? With what they did to you?’

Another complicated question. I stroked her hair and looked down into her eyes. They were like mirror images of her real eyes. Now she would only ever see me through a machine, they same way I could see her. It had been so long that I couldn’t remember what it was like to see with real eyes.

‘When you first get augmented it’s really cool. All your new capabilities are exhilarating, I guess. You’re stronger, much faster, see and hear further, all that. But a horrible amount of my body is machinery.’ I felt her running her fingers up the scarred skin of my chest. She would feel the hardness of the armour under the skin. ‘You start to feel like part of you is missing, dislocated somehow. It’s like you know something is wrong but you don’t know what. I’ve heard people say that they feel like they’re haunting themselves. It’s the sort of thing that people say just before they go psycho.’ I played the tips of my fingers over the plugs in the back of her neck. ‘I’m just eager to hold on to what I’ve got left, I mean really eager.’ She pulled her hair down over the plugs in the back of her neck.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Really good,’ I answered straight away and then found myself surprised by the answer.

‘Everyone thought you were going to freak out.’

‘I did, didn’t I?’

‘Not as much as we thought you would. Mudge said you’d either try and throw yourself through the membrane -’ fat chance, I didn’t like vacuum ‘- or feed yourself into the toilet creature.’ She shivered as she said this. I don’t think she liked the toilet creature much.

‘Yeah, well, nobody else is an alien.’

‘You said I was.’

‘How many times do I have to apologise for that? Look, I saw what happened to Crom.’ Don’t call it Gregor. ‘And I don’t want to be like Rolleston.’

‘You don’t want to walk through railgun fire?’

I gave that some thought.

‘Depends on the cost.’ I wondered if I did have any extraordinary capabilities. I guess there was no real way to find out until something really bad happened to me. Well either that or I started self-harming.

‘Do you feel human?’ she asked.

I had to laugh at this.

‘What?’

‘The weird thing is, I feel more human than I have in a long time.’

‘So you’re going to accept it and, you know…’

‘What?’

‘Not be a difficult tosser about it?’

I started laughing as she smiled again. We lapsed into silence, enjoying each other’s company. Watching the industrious aliens, trying to ignore the sound of Mudge retching. It was romantic.

‘What are They going to do?’ I asked. The intelligence we had on Crom was sketchy at best, but the Cabal probably still had the ability to manufacture more. They could either destroy or control Them if they wanted.

‘They’re leaving,’ Morag said. She sounded so very sad. Like crying sad. ‘We’re too chaotic, too dangerous, too… too hateful, and duplicitous and greedy and violent.’ Now she sounded angry. ‘Even though we have enough of everything.’

I wondered how she could even imagine that after growing up in Fintry and the Rigs, where everything you needed just to live had to be fought for in one way or another. I held her close to me. Again she was being naive, but I couldn’t fault her logic. We as a race did have enough. I didn’t really have anything I could say to her.

‘They’re going far, far away, all of Them. As far as They can get, and when They see us coming in the future, if we have one, They’ll go further still because we can’t be trusted. It was what I told them to do.’

I wasn’t sure she quite understood the significance of what she had said. Here was an eighteen-year-old girl from what middle-class corporate wage slaves would describe as the dregs of society — though those dregs seemed to get larger and larger every day — advising an entire alien race on its foreign policy.

‘And They’re going to do that?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘Our loss.’

She was right. This was a race that had gone from inert singing space coral to the technological equivalent of humanity in just a few years after the Cabal had provided the correct stimulus. Had we managed to communicate with Them peacefully the advances we could have made in biotechnology would have been staggering. Also I had heard Them sing.

Morag stood up and took me by the arm, pulling me after her. I stood and allowed myself to be dragged along.

‘Watch this,’ she said. She took me along a short corridor towards another membrane that led deeper into the rock. She pulled me towards it, reached out and pushed her hand through it.

‘Morag!’ But her hand was fine. She stepped through into another area of the asteroid. As she did the springy comfortable moss that I recognised from our side of the membrane started to appear under her bare feet. She pulled me through. There seemed to be a rush of air and it was slightly colder but warming up. The moss was continuing to grow in front of our eyes down the corridor.

Morag pulled me down the corridor into an area that I can only describe as a grotto. It didn’t seem to have the utilitarian but often beautiful look that Them-forms had. This looked like a human take on some kind of fairy-tale alien garden.

‘You made this?’ I asked her.

‘No, They did, but I asked Them to.’

‘Its not what you know,’ I said under my breath. She ignored me. Instead she lay down on the moss and pulled me down on top of her. I covered her mouth with mine.

This felt like a reward. Not Morag giving herself to me but both of us being here, alive. It felt like a reward for everything we’d been through because we’d been trying hard to do the right thing. I don’t know if we had, but intent’s got to count for something.

I just wish that Balor, Buck, Vicar and Gibby had made it and got their reward.

I wondered if I was going to start wanting to go home. Morag took me somewhere else.

‘So you’re really not coming?’

She was sitting up in the bed, the cover wrapped around her while I stood at the window looking out over the rooftops of wherever we were. The heat haze almost made it look pretty. I turned to look at her.

‘Morag, I know it seems like copping out to you but, as insane as the last three months have been, you weren’t there for the previous twelve years. The crawling through mud, the getting injured, starving, no sleep, bad drugs, fear all the time and seeing people you like die so often you stopped bothering to get to know them. I’ve had enough, and despite what you may think I have no stomach for killing humans.’

‘But it’s all right to kill Them?’ There was no judgement there, just a question.

‘It’s a lot easier, and They were mostly trying to kill me at the time. Look, I don’t know if I’m me or the alien…’ She started to interrupt me. ‘No, wait. But I should be dead, lucky breaks in combat aside.’ Though, thinking about it, none of them seemed lucky; they felt like they’d been won through blood and pain. ‘The radiation poisoning should have killed me. I’ve got a second chance in hopefully a changed world. I think it would be stupid and wasteful to just throw that away.’

She regarded me carefully for a while. I couldn’t work out the expression on her face. Then she smiled. ‘I think you are the alien.’

This confused me. ‘I thought-’

‘It sounds like you’re starting to care about yourself.’

Maybe she was right, but I didn’t want to analyse it too much. ‘I think you may have underestimated how much of a coward I’ve always been.’ I don’t know why I couldn’t look at her as I said it.

She dropped the sheet and climbed off the bed, coming over and wrapping her arms around me. I could feel how much her body had changed. How much tougher she had become. I could remember how fragile I’d thought she was. She kissed me. Brave girl after what I’d been drinking last night.

‘I don’t think you’re a coward. I don’t think you’re copping out. I just wished, you know…’ Now she couldn’t look at me. She laid her head against my chest.

‘That I’d be around?’ She nodded, her hair brushing against me. ‘Look, if you’re serious about this, if you think that we could be together without screaming all the time or trying to kill each other or me not doing anything stupid, then I can hang around. I just don’t want to have anything to do with that prick Sharcroft. Besides, I always fancied being a cowboy.’

She looked confused. ‘A cowboy? Like a cybrid?’ she asked.

I laughed. ‘No, really not.’ Then suddenly she was sad again. ‘What?’

‘It’s just that… being here wouldn’t help…’

I didn’t understand. Slowly it dawned on me what she was talking about.

‘Morag, are you going off-world?’

Any warm feelings I’d had were replaced by a very cold fear crawling through me.

‘We need to stop talking now.’

‘Morag,’ I grabbed her, my metal hand and my real one wrapping around the wiry muscle of her upper arms. ‘Tell me you’re not going to the colonies.’

She looked straight into the black lenses of my eyes. ‘Let me go, now.’ There was steel in her voice. ‘Didn’t take you long to change back, did it?’ I let her go.

‘Morag, it’s-’

‘Too dangerous? Again? What is dangerous is you keep talking about this.’

‘I was going to say a death sentence.’

‘You need to stop now.’

‘You’re right. There’s no need to hang around here because that twisted, evil half-dead bastard is going to get you killed out of pure fucking speculation.’

‘If you don’t with your big mouth.’

She grabbed her clothes and stormed out past a surprised-looking Rannu. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen the normally calm Nepalese look surprised before. I don’t know why he looked surprised. Morag and I were always fighting.

Being naked I decided to climb back into the bed and pull the sheets up. Then I tried looking for any leftover rotting whisky. Rannu stood at the bottom of the bed. He seemed uncomfortable.

‘Sit down, Rannu,’ I told him. I’d finally found a bottle with some tequila left in it. I took a swig and offered it to Rannu. He looked pained.

‘Hangover?’ I asked.

‘Either that or I have severely offended the gods.’

‘It was a good send-off,’ I said, mostly for something to say. It had only been three ex-squaddies, a computer hacker and a journalist getting drunk in whatever shithole this was. I think they deserved parades and celebrations like the sort I’d seen in history vizzes and read about. Rannu nodded anyway, I think to humour me.

‘You’re leaving?’

‘Apparently there’s nothing to stay here for.’ Though I had no idea what I was going to do next. ‘You going home?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You have a family, kids,’ I told him.

‘Which is why I must go.’ I recognised the resolve in his voice.

‘You ever done anything this dumb?’ Being a member of the Regiment he would have done a number of really dumb things under orders. He’d also done some dumb things with us.

‘Not quite,’ he said.

‘It’s a death sentence. This isn’t Them; this is people with near-total surveillance who understand strategy, tactics, tradecraft, who know your training and have superior physical and possibly technological abilities. This is not the way to fight this war.’

‘More than anything we need information.’

That I couldn’t deny. ‘How are you going to get it out?’

He just looked at me.

‘We can’t hide from God; how can you hide from Demiurge?’

‘If I couldn’t hide from God then we wouldn’t be having this conversation,’ he said evenly. He seemed more blase about operational security than Morag had. He must have checked out the place for surveillance first.

‘Are you going to let her go on her own?’ he asked. I had not been so pissed off at him since he’d pulled my arm off and used it to beat me unconscious.

‘Fuck you, Rannu. Fuck you and fuck your emotional blackmail!’ I think he was taken aback by the amount of anger in my response. ‘But as we’re raising the stakes a little, when your body isn’t found what do you want me to tell your kids? Daddy died on a fool’s fucking errand working for exactly the kind of pricks we all nearly died fighting in the first place.’

He looked genuinely hurt by the time I’d finished. Genuinely upset and the most emotional I think I’d ever seen him.

‘Don’t talk about my family again,’ he said and turned and walked out of the room. I felt like shit. Despite one-sided attempts to kill each other early on in our relationship, Rannu had been a rock. He’d dealt with all the shit that had been thrown at him and never complained.

I saw the cigarette smoke in the doorway.

‘Are you recording this?’ I asked Mudge.

‘Yep. Fuck their operational security. You know there were a couple of Sharcroft’s people watching us last night and apparently a surveillance team in the opposite building?’

I’d seen the tails but didn’t know about the team. Made sense though. Problem was, these days your surveillance couldn’t go over the net. Even radio waves were a risk, because the moment God knew then everyone could know if they just asked.

‘Rannu dealt with them?’ I asked.

‘Non-lethally.’ That would explain why he disappeared for half an hour at the beginning of the evening. ‘He then cleared our rooms of bugs. Made sure that there was nothing God-like nearby and set up white noise and other counter-surveillance stuff. Hence the reason your total lack of discretion didn’t kill anyone.’

‘I thought you hated all this operational security stuff.’

‘I do. Stops me from finding out all sorts of things. You don’t though. Were you trying to blow their op before she gets started?’

‘Are you coming in?’ I asked. Mudge spun into the doorway. He had a pair of expensive-looking designer sunglasses over his camera eyes and a bottle of tequila in one hand.

‘You hear everything?’

‘I didn’t listen to you have sex. Much.’

‘That’s weird, man.’

Mudge dragged a chair over and sat down, putting both his cowboy boots up on the bed.

‘Give me a drink,’ I demanded.

Mudge shook his head and took a swig from the bottle, grinned at me and then lit up a cigarette.

‘Fag?’ he asked. I was sorely tempted.

‘Just give me a drink. Stop being selfish.’ He threw the bottle to me. I took the top off, ignored the glowing worm and took a long swig of the foul-tasting stuff.

‘Mudge.’ I examined the bottle. ‘You basically go around being obnoxious to people yet they still talk to you. I try not to be obnoxious and always end up pissing people off.’

He gave this some thought. ‘I think you’re more hurtful than I am,’ he finally said.

‘I don’t mean to be. Besides, you say hurtful things.’

‘Could you sound any gayer? I manage people’s expectations. They expect me to be obnoxious so when I tell the truth they’re less surprised. So what’s next? Gonna alienate me?’

‘May as well. You going as well?’

‘Fuck that. It’s a mug’s game. Look, I got a rush driving around in landies, or flying around in gunships, shooting stuff and blowing shit up, but you’re right. They don’t know what they’re getting into. They’ve got the training, or rather Rannu has, but he’s never had to put it into action. It’s an insurgency and they’ll have to be criminals, terrorists…’

‘We’ve done that.’

‘Not like this. Look, God love you, Jakob, but your big plan to deal with the Cabal and not kill any more people — and, you know, good for you, as much as I disapprove of this new pacifist you — was to get some big guns and go on system-wide TV. I mean, I get it. I loved it, but fucking subtle we are not. There’s just too much we don’t know, and without any way to communicate or feed back intelligence it’s a waste of time. Actions like this are part of a big plan; if they’re completely isolated then it’s a waste of time.’

I was taken aback by Mudge’s understanding. ‘So I’m right?’

‘You sound surprised. Yes, you’re right.’

‘But they’re not stupid. Did you tell them this?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Its funnier when they all hate you.’ I glared at him. ‘Besides, I’m not sure I liked the look in their eyes.’

‘Mudge, none of them have real eyes.’

He just smiled at me and took another drag on his cigarette.

‘What are you going to do then?’ I asked after taking another disgusting swig.

‘Can I get you some lime and salt? No? Well we’re fucking celebrities now.’

I wasn’t sure about this. Fortunately I’d been dying of radiation sickness at the time so now that I was a healthy alien/human hybrid I looked different, but I’d still been recognised several times. Reactions were different. Some were supportive, enthusiastic, got what we’d done and why we’d done it. Many were downright hostile, blaming us for the war and their new near-total lack of privacy. Most were just suspicious. I’d punched the first guy who’d asked me for an autograph. I hadn’t meant to; he’d just come up to me a little too quickly.

‘I’ve been offered a number of jobs,’ Mudge continued. ‘Mainly in journalism but some in presenting. I intend to take the most prestigious and well paid first and then work my way down as I get fired for doing the most outrageous thing I can think of.’

‘I think you’ll like that. Good luck.’

‘You?’

He was regarding me carefully. I think he knew that this was a question I was dreading. I didn’t want to go and die in some shitty colony but I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t have any cash. There was no way I was ever going to be psychologically capable of cashing in on my notoriety. I’d seen ex-special forces in the world of entertainment — it always made me cringe. Also I was well enough known and the results of our actions were still suitably up in the air for my notoriety to work both ways. Was I really just going to go back to pit fighting, scheme racing, ripping off people weaker than me, and the booths? If I was, then I still had to get back to Dundee.

Why would I want to go back to Dundee? The only reason I could think of was my bike.

‘I don’t know,’ I finally said. ‘I guess I’m staying around here and looking for work. Then who knows?’

‘Is that in case you see her?’

‘No, it’s because I’m fucking skint.’ And far too proud to ask if she still had any of the money that Vicar had given us.

‘I got you covered.’

This pissed me off. Mudge could be like this sometimes. He came from a reasonably well-off family and his job paid a lot more than being in the SAS had. He’d often offer to pay for things. It was patronising. I didn’t need charity. Okay, maybe I needed charity but still, I had my pride and a bottle of tequila. Admittedly it was Mudge’s tequila.

‘Look, Mudge, I’ve told you about-’

‘Relax. I’m not about to further abuse your fragile Celtic pride. I made some investments on everyone’s behalf.’ He looked quite smug.

‘What gave you the right-’

‘Okay, let me put it another way. I capitalised on all our suffering.’

A file was blinking away in the corner of my IVD. Mudge had just sent it to me. I opened it up and saw what he was talking about. He’d sold the story, including the download and broadcast rights to an edited version of all the stuff that had happened.

‘You should have asked us about this.’

‘Jake, you get that I’m a journalist, don’t you? Don’t let my cameo as a revolutionary fool you — this is my job. It’s the one thing I take seriously.’ All flippancy was gone now.

I remember just after I’d first met Mudge he’d quoted some pre-FHC writer who’d said that a journalist’s job was to charm and betray. They needed to get to know who they were writing about so they could reveal — not all, but what needed to be revealed for the story. Suddenly that struck me as a very lonely existence.

On the other hand, if these figures were right he’d made a fucking fortune.

‘Merchandising?’ I demanded.

Mudge started laughing.

‘You’ll love it, man. They’ve even got these cute little animatronic action figures. The one of you has really realistic sores from the rad sickness, but you get likeness rights on every one sold. Mind you, if we’re inadvertently responsible for starting the war that wipes Earth out or if the Cabal win we might not sell very many. Also I think you’re the ugliest. Balor, Gregor and Morag all tested well, as did I of course. Best of all, we make money off the figures of the villains.’

‘Rolleston and Josephine?’ I asked incredulously. Mudge was grinning. ‘They’re going to castrate you and dip the wound in biting insects when they get hold of you.’

I tried to imagine how angry the pair of them would be when they found out. As pissed off as I was by the idea of little action figures of me, if the figures were correct then I was not just looking at a sum of money but an income. It was like some kind of financial sorcery. How could I be earning this much money if I wasn’t actually doing anything?

I continued reviewing the information that Mudge had sent me. He’d done well. It looked to me like he’d squeezed as much money out of this as possible. Everything had been divided equally, though arguably he’d done all the work. It wasn’t just Morag, Rannu, Pagan, Mudge and me. He’d set up trusts in Buck, Gibby and Balor’s names. He told me he was going to see if they had any of what he called ‘genuine’ family to hand the money over to. What he meant was he didn’t want to give it to any freeloading opportunists who were vaguely related. If he couldn’t find anyone he was going to give their money to charitable organisations that he thought they would have approved of. He reckoned it would mainly be veterans’ charities, maybe shark conservation for Balor.

‘So? Does this change things?’ Mudge asked.

‘It really does.’

‘So what are you going to do?’

‘Retire.’ Then I saw something that caught my eye. ‘You’re calling your memoirs My Struggle?’

Mudge was grinning again. ‘Yes, but only to upset people. I got the idea from the Wait.’