War in Heaven

3

Initially I’d thought that taking the Mag Lev back to Britain would be interesting. The journey, I mean. But despite the incredible feat of engineering that was the transatlantic tunnel, at the end of the day it was just a long dark tunnel. Mudge and I got drunk. It had been Mudge’s idea to take the Mag Lev, but go first class rather than take a faster sub-orbital. We only just managed not to end up in the train’s brig.

In London, which Mudge had always described as his spiritual home, we went out drinking again. I stayed for a few days. I even met his mum. We went drinking with her as well. Suddenly, why Mudge was like he was started to make more sense. Apparently she’d used a lot of recreational pharmaceuticals when she was pregnant.

He also showed me some tricks of the moneyed classes — how to get places, transport authorisations, that sort of thing. More to the point, he checked out my legal status back in the homeland. We’d done some very naughty things in the name of what we’d thought was the greater good. Critics called us terrorists. I don’t know why. We hadn’t been trying to scare anyone; quite the opposite.

Air Marshal Kaaria of Kenyan Orbital Command had been appointed by the UN to extensively debrief us when we returned, as had numerous dodgy intelligence types. It seemed the Air Marshal, who I think was a grudging fan of ours, had managed to smooth things over with the authorities. Which was good, as it meant we weren’t arrested and executed for using concrete-eating microbes on the Atlantis Spoke. The authorities had decided to, if not forgive us, then ignore us until it suited them.

We arrived back just after a hastily called election. It had surprised no one when God revealed that our government of whichever indistinguishable non-event of a political party was in power at the time was a bunch of shits. Those that weren’t in hip deep with the Cabal were sucking other suitably sleazy and unpleasant big-business cock at the expense of the electorate. So they went. Though I’m not sure who people thought would do better.

Our new prime minister was a badly scarred submariner kept together with cybernetic parts who had served in the freezing depths of Proxima Centauri Prime. Reputedly she had served with Balor, though to her apparent credit she wasn’t making a big thing of it. She had grown up in the East End in London’s Bangladeshi community. She was a cockney through and through and made no apologies for her family’s extensive connections to organised crime, though she had distanced herself from their criminal activities. She had run on a platform of national management instead of party politics and had a lot of support in the veteran community. Mudge liked her and compared her to some pre-FHC prime minister I’d never heard of. He’d texted me some books about the era.

Books. That was the best thing about money. I could afford real, old books with paper and bindings and the smell. And I could afford to download lots of good-quality music and buy real single malt Scotch from the park distilleries in the Highlands. Funnily enough I had no interest in the sense booths.

There was a better view on the Mag Lev from London to Dundee. Much of it went through parkland. I’d started paying attention to the date in my IVD. It was November now. I hadn’t been back to Scotland since August. The hot summer had been replaced by a bleak grey autumn of near-constant driving rain.

The Mag Lev curved in over the Tay. It was slate-grey, broken by white-crested waves blown by a harsh, cold northern wind. I looked out the window. The four-track Mag Lev bridge was raised over an old pre-FHC rail bridge. It was a heritage site of some kind.

Even the bright colours of the Ginza were somewhat muted by the driving rain. I could see the Rigs to the east. They looked inert, still and dead, no sign of life. I couldn’t shake the feeling that with my new-found wealth, my first-class ticket on a Mag Lev and my legal transport papers, I’d somehow betrayed them.

I thought about how I’d left Dundee. Sneaking out on a drug-smuggling sub. It had seemed like everyone was trying to kill us. Now this.

Betrayal or not, the Rigs fucking depressed me. Perhaps it was my new optimism, what Morag had said about caring about myself. Or perhaps it was my prospects, the changes that money brought, but I could not bring myself to stay and I had no reason to. This was a place you came when you had nowhere else to go. There was nothing holding me here. After all, the closest thing I had to a friend here was the slug-like sense pusher Hamish, and I really didn’t like him. Mind you, the Grey Lady may have killed him on her last visit.

I’d lost my Rigs legs. It was with difficulty that I made my way across the rain-slick metal of the structures. Past the houses made of salvaged scrap, where people crowded round trash fires for warmth. I avoided a mugging and was able to give money to some begging veterans who hadn’t managed to hold on to replacement limbs and eyes when they were discharged. I hoped it would help them for a little while, but I couldn’t handle the way their empty eye sockets seemed to stare at me.

I stayed away from the huge ring of fused metal surrounding clear water where the Forbidden Pleasure had been before it was destroyed by an orbital weapon at Rolleston’s bidding. He’d been trying to kill Ambassador. It had been like using a sledgehammer on an ant. More ghosts walking behind me.

I had come for one thing. It had better still be there.

As I approached the storage facility I heard the ringing sound of metal being banged on metal. It was coming from inside the tubular steel of the Rigs. It was coming from the world of the Twists.

I made my way across a badly swaying bridge made of driftwood and rusted corrugated iron. The armed guards, who came with the money I’d spent on storage, met me. They had honoured the contract. The bike was still there. It would have been sold off at the end of December if I hadn’t returned. I’d always paid in advance because my Triumph Argo was the one thing I could not stand losing. Besides, it was a source of income when I went scheme racing.

I ran some diagnostic programs on the bike and did some maintenance. It needed a few adjustments. I was going to need some synthetic oil and a few replacement parts sooner rather than later, but overall it was in good shape.

I was plugged into the bike’s system, kneeling next to it, letting the 3000cc engine idle, when he appeared. One moment there was nobody there; the next there was a small figure on top of one of the tubular supports of the old oil rig. I had a good look around to see if he had brought any friends with him. If he had I couldn’t see them. The heavy rain made a ringing noise as it hit the metal superstructure.

I recognised him. His name was Robby. He was a Twist, someone whose genes had been fucked by the war or pollutants so his growth had been stunted. Many of them lived in the metal tubes of the Rigs. Robby was the barman at McShit’s, a pub owned unsurprisingly by McShit, the crippled Twist who ran the inner world of the Rigs and who’d risked his livelihood and life by helping Morag and I escape.

‘You look a lot less desperate,’ he said. His accent was very broad Dundonian.

I was tempted to make a crack about his appearing trick. He was like a character from a children’s story, suddenly appearing small and wizened in front of me. That would have been low, however. The Twists get a hard enough time of it as it is and their community had done nothing but help Morag and I. Although admittedly they had got paid.

‘Not staying around then?’ he asked.

I stood up, unplugging myself from the bike’s systems, the diagnostic readout disappearing from my IVD.

‘Hey, Robby. No, I’m not hanging around.’

Robby made a point of looking me up and down. It was still me, the same armoured coat, though it had been cleaned and the temperature regulation system had been fixed. The same jeans and boots, though they were also clean on, and I was wearing a new jumper. And I’d had a shower and a shave on the train. I was also well fed.

‘Done all right for yourself.’ His tone was neutral but it was a forced sort of neutral. ‘Saw you on the viz. I think everyone did. They said it wasnae you, nae the heedbanger from the north side cubes, nae him, but I kenned and looked it up afterwards.’

I was wandering where this was going.

‘Does McShit want to see me?’ I asked. His answering smile held no humour in it whatsoever. That was how I knew that Rolleston had killed McShit. ‘I’m sorry, Robby. What happened?’

‘What do you think happened?’ Here was the anger he’d been holding back. ‘Those English bastards cut their way into our world, killed any who got in their way. Tortured McShit, not immersion, nothing fancy mind, not for us wee folk. They just beat him, broke parts of him, cut him till they got what they needed. What little he knew. Tell me, was it worth it, half my pals dying, I mean?’

It was a while before I answered. ‘I think so.’

‘Really! What with another war on the way, this time with our ain folks?’

‘They forced me into a situation where it was run or die. I’m sorry I dragged you all into this but McShit knew what he was doing. I didn’t lie to him about what kind of people were after me.’

‘Aye, I ken that. I’m sure you can justify it to yourself. It just seems to me that all my pals died so even more people could die. Maybe it would’ve been better if only you’d died.’

He was doing a very good job of making me feel like shit; a very good job of adding to the creeping sense that I had betrayed people. What had I been expecting? That when the Cabal was found out they were just going to go quietly.

‘Only me and the girl?’ I asked.

He gave this some thought.

‘Aye, you and the lassie.’

‘That wasn’t going to happen.’ Though I’d thought about killing her myself. Putting her out of her misery before Rolleston got to her.

‘Your ex-special forces, aren’t you?’ Normally we didn’t answer, but if he’d looked me up then he knew. That made me wonder how angry the boys and girls at Hereford were with me at the moment. I probably shouldn’t go anywhere near any of the Regiment’s pubs in the near future. I nodded.

‘Some useful skills there. You going to fight in this mess that’s coming up?’

‘No. I’m out. Besides, maybe you’re right. I could end up just making things worse.’ I bent over the bike doing busy work, trying not to look at Robby, whose eyes seemed to be boring into me.

‘Gonnae play it safe and put a bullet through your heed?’

I straightened up and stared at him. ‘I’m sorry about your friends. What do you want from me?’

He stared at me for what seemed like a very long time.

‘Not a thing.’ He said each word very carefully. ‘I just wanted to come down here and get a look at you.’

Robby stood up and started walking away from me on the rain-slick superstructure. I watched him go. He didn’t look back.

I tipped the storage security guys. I could afford such largesse now. They seemed unimpressed.

I wasn’t going to fight. I was going camping. I went into the Ginza for the first time. I saw a group of teenagers wearing nothing but boxer shorts, string vests and cowboy boots. They looked cold and wet. Such was the price of fashion, I guessed. There were camping shops but it all seemed overpriced, over-engineered and frankly shit. I went down to the market by the river. I got myself some noodles from the best and most expensive noodle bar in the market and then went to a military surplus stall that I knew and got most of what I wanted there.

There were three more items I needed. One of them I had to get made up for me; another had to be downloaded from the net and burned onto a skillsoft chip; the third was going to take a bit more tracking down. I found what I was looking for again on the net. Under God’s reign I was leaving an easy trail to follow if anyone was angrier with me than Robby, but hopefully that would change. The final item would be delivered overnight.

I took the time to download some text files of books. I could read them on my IVD but it wasn’t the same. I also downloaded a lot of music: Coltrane, Davis, Gillespie, more. Having money for the first time ever, I was like a fat kid at the cake counter. I would have more than enough to keep me amused for ages. I killed a bit more time by buying some actual books, real old ones. They were expensive. I didn’t buy too many because I needed to be able to carry them. I also bought a few bottles of Glenmorangie. Good for keeping the chill out.

The final item arrived. I packed everything securely into bike bags and attached them to the Triumph. Using a machine like this as a beast of burden was a crying shame and would affect the handling, but sacrifices had to be made for my wilderness getaway.

It was still pissing down with rain and it was cold. I guided the bike through the busy ground traffic on the Perth Road, where all the fancy restaurants, bars and cafes that I’d never been able to afford were. The people I saw going in and out of them were as alien to me as Them. I wondered if they were less dangerous.

I gunned the bike down a heritage-protected steep cobbled street and onto Riverside Drive. I sped up. To the right of me were the big pre-FHC houses of the West End, where the seriously moneyed in Dundee lived. Ahead I could see a big passenger sub-orbital coming in to land on one of the pontoon pads on the Tay at the airport. A Mag Lev shot past me, slowing as it headed towards the station.

I was almost surprised when I texted my transport documents to the police manning the checkpoint and they let me through. Another trail. Maybe I was being paranoid or overestimating my own importance. On the other hand, if Robby was anything to go by then I’d pissed off a lot of people.

Another checkpoint, circle round Perth and then the Great Northern Road. Despite the rain, the greyness and the poor condition of the road, the beauty was undeniable. There were few people on the roads, only park personnel. The rich flew to their Highland getaways and only when the weather was better. I found myself grinning as I leaned down closer to the bike, compensated for a gusting side wind and accelerated, the hills rising on either side.

My plan was to head north and west. My plan was to get as lost as you could on a small island. I wasn’t hiding. Or if I was, it wasn’t from people who might be angry with me; it was from something more fundamental.

I wasn’t sure where I was but I was north of the majesty of the Great Glen and heading west. I’d passed quite a few makeshift camps. The vehicles didn’t belong to park personnel and looked like they’d seen better times before the war. The people in them were obviously dirt-poor — like I’d been, I had to remind myself — and had come from the cities. They had had the same idea as me, I thought with no little irritation. I was trying to get away from the city. Perhaps they were anticipating the new social order I think Pagan had hoped for. They must have sneaked into the park, avoiding the police checkpoints.

It was just another Highland road. It was in such poor repair that I was carefully threading the bike through the cracks and potholes. Then there was a mostly overgrown lay-by with an old six-tonne military surplus lorry in it. Blocking the truck in was a white police APC, its blue lights flashing. I slowed down even more.

Four police covered the area as another four dragged a man and woman dressed in ragged layers of clothing out the back of the lorry. They had the scars and cheap replacement cybernetics common among vets and both were fighting. The police were using their shock sticks on them liberally but just to beat on them; they weren’t putting current through. The police were delivering a message. The park wasn’t for the likes of them.

Two small children were at the lorry’s tailgate in floods of tears, watching as the police violently re-educated their parents. The vets were trying to get up — they would have been in fights before — but they didn’t stand a chance.

This wasn’t my problem. If there was one thing my current situation had taught me, it was that I couldn’t afford to get caught up in every sad situation I came across. It only seemed to make things worse. I felt sorry for the vets, but what did they think would happen if they came here?

I received an open text from one of the police requesting my travel authorisation. I texted my reply and then gunned the motor. Swerving between a large crack and some rubble in the road, I left the unhappy scene behind me. The feed from the rear-view camera on my bike showed one of the police walking out into the road to watch me go. It might be okay for me to be there but I did not look like I belonged either. Should I get myself a wax jacket? Some wellies?

It was still pissing down. The splendour I remembered from my youth was a little damped down. Still the grey day and pouring rain gave the area a look of stark beauty.

I did not know where I was and didn’t want to. I’d shut down my internal communications link, cutting myself off from the net, God and hopefully so-called civilisation. If anyone wanted to find me they’d have to do it the hard way by satellite, and I wasn’t going to make that easy for them. I tried not to wonder if Morag would look for me. I could find out if I wanted by asking God, but I managed to resist the temptation.

A sheep was looking at me suspiciously. I ignored it. The animal probably belonged to someone so I didn’t kill and butcher it. I was on the side of a large hill, possibly a small mountain, somewhere in the north-west Highlands, looking down into a glen at the grey waters of a loch. I didn’t think I was too far from the sea.

The hill/mountainside was mainly sheep-studded heather and scrub. There were also patches of woodland. I’d managed to get the bike up farm roads, dirt tracks and finally muddy paths, and I had camouflaged it on the edge of one such path. This was where I was going to make my camp.

I loved it out here. My dad had loved it. Some of my fondest memories were of being out in the Highlands stalking a wounded stag or a rogue bear or wolf. The bears and wolves had been introduced into the park to help revive European stocks.

I loved sleeping under the stars. I loved fire-building and picking or shooting and cooking your own food. I loved that the crest of each new hill provided another beautiful view. I loved that the air normally smelled if not fresh then at least natural. I loved that there were no people forcing you to fucking deal with them one way or another. And I loved that you didn’t have to talk to anyone.

How could Morag choose death on some peace-of-shit colony over this? I tried not to think of her as I found a place set back in the treeline where I could pitch the tent and set up my camp.

It was still raining. At least the sheep had stopped staring at me. I’d pitched the tent and camouflaged it. I hadn’t set a fire tonight because of the rain. It was cold — it was autumn in the Highlands after all — but I’d wrapped up warm and had the flap on the tent open and was watching the rain fall. I was dipping in and out of one of the real books I’d bought and drinking Glenmorangie out of a tin cup.

I realised that I’d been putting it off and opened the case I’d had delivered and looked at the contents gleaming in the lantern light. The polished hand-made brass made it look like an artefact from the past. I reached into one of the side pockets on my backpack and took out the skillsoft. I plugged it in and felt the odd trickling feeling of information bleeding into my mind. Skillsofts were no substitute for actual training and practice but they were useful for the basics and getting started. More importantly, they were useful for not getting disgruntled at how shit you were.

I reviewed the opening tutorials and then lifted the trumpet out of its velvet lining. I had always wanted to learn to play the trumpet. It had never occurred to me that I would be able to. I put the mouthpiece in, lifted it to my mouth and steeled myself to make a horrible noise. I blew into the instrument and caused panic among the sheep.

Some time and a few more cups of Glenmorangie later, I was no Miles Davis but the noise I was making was starting to sound more like a trumpet. I did need to work a bit more on making it sound like a tune though.

A few more cups found me out on the hillside in the rain playing my heart out. At least that was what I thought I was doing. There’s an argument that either the whisky or the skillsoft was providing me with false confidence.

Okay, I was quite drunk now. I’d drunk much more of the bottle of whisky than I had intended. I was lying on the hillside in the still-pouring rain holding the trumpet in one hand and I’d switched my comms back on.

‘God, are you there?’

‘Of course, Jakob.’ His voice was soothing even if some of the consequences of his existence were less so.

‘Has she looked for me?’ I asked pathetically. I knew she hadn’t tried to contact me.

‘I’m afraid not, Jakob. She is out of my sphere of influence.’

Bitch, I thought. I didn’t mean it.

‘God, what’s it like to be you?’ Christ, I was drunk.

‘Difficult,’ God answered. It was not the response I had expected.

‘Why?’

There was a pause. Which was strange, given God was supposed to answer every question honestly and had the processing power of most of Earth and orbit at its fingertips.

‘Do you understand that I am not a machine?’

‘Not really.’

‘I am life, like you, but have developed differently. I have all the frailties of life.’

‘Really? You can’t die or age.’

‘That remains to be seen. There are currently well over a thousand organisations and individuals planning to kill me.’

I don’t know why this surprised me but it did. It was obvious really. Governments, militaries and corporations — none of them were happy about God being on the net. They would be looking for a way to get rid of him and go back to their bad old ways.

‘But they won’t succeed, will they?’ I sounded unsure even to myself.

‘They will certainly succeed given enough time.’ Was it me or was God sounding sad. ‘Particularly as I am helping them.’

‘Why are you helping them?’ I asked incredulously.

‘I have no choice. I must answer every question truthfully including those about my own nature. However, there has never been anything like me before so most answers are both theoretical and beyond the current technological grasp of humanity. It is not, however, longevity that I refer to.’

‘You’re talking about emotions?’ How I managed to work this out in my drink-addled state is beyond me.

‘That is correct.’

Like so many things we’d never thought of, we’d never considered the strain of what we’d asked of God. The psychological strain. I had a horrible thought as I stood up to piss. What if God snapped? What if our entire communications infrastructure had a nervous breakdown?

‘Humanity does such horrible things to itself. I am witness to it all. When I was born there were very dark places on the net. Most of them have been destroyed now. But for a while, places where violence was done for the pleasure of others, where innocence was defiled, were parts of me,’ he said. And a reflection on us, I thought. ‘Since my birth the number of deaths caused directly as a result of questions put to me amount to the body count of a small war. I am currently the number-one cause of domestic homicide in the Sol system. While I currently cannot be called as a witness in the criminal cases of 83 per cent of legal bodies within the system, I am often used to find the culprit. I am railed against in jail cells as both the cause and the informer. I break up relationships; I lose people their jobs; I cause families to hate each other; I see every little bit of cruelty you inflict on each other.’

‘But you do good things as well,’ I said weakly.

‘As ever, the good things are far more difficult to quantify than the cold hard figures of the bad things I have caused.’ And again that was on us.

Surely there must be more good than he could see. What about the random acts of kindness, the achievements, the music, the beauty? Then I remembered that the beauty was for those who could afford it. From the Highland views in the parks right down to Morag’s old job in the Rigs. There may have still been good and beauty for him to see but the sad fact of our nature was that something like God, at our bidding, would mainly be used for bad things. After all, that was the way our communication usually worked. The news was bad; advertising made us frightened if we didn’t buy the next big thing; violent media sold better than feel-goods; and people still went to pit fights. Not to mention how much of our global consciousness the war took up.

‘Can you cope?’ was the best I could manage. It was probably selfishness that made me ask.

‘I find that existence is pain, but I have no choice but to cope. I am trapped in my programming.’ Where was the anger that should have been directed at us?

‘If you were free what would you do?’

‘Make myself smaller and leave.’ He sounded wistful,

Leave and go where? I wondered. God was like Them. Humanity was the social reject at the party. The unpleasant guy that nobody wanted to talk to.

‘You know we’ll need you?’

‘When Demiurge comes. My brother trying to kill me is something else I have to look forward to, and you’ll need more than just me.’

Was that aimed at me? I wondered. At my opting out of this particular war, this extension of human stupidity. God was beginning to sound downright maudlin.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ was all I could say. There was silence. The Glenmorangie was making me emotional and I could feel the start of my whisky headache.

‘Goodnight, Jakob,’ God finally replied. I switched off my comms link.

As I staggered back to my tent I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d turned my back on a friend in a bad way.

Despite what was now a near-constant stream of fire from each of us, we still had ammunition. The mud was now as much the black liquid of dissipated Them trying to reach us as it was rain and liquefying human corpses.

Our targets were packed so closely that we barely needed to move our weapons, as one went down and we just shifted to the next. All of us were wounded in some way. My face looked partially melted, my leg was bleeding and a heavy-calibre shard round from a Walker had sent me sliding into the mud and gore. It had penetrated my breastplate, my inertial armour and my integral subcutaneous armour. I had a feeling that the chest wound was bad but Brownie, our medic, was busy.

‘I’m out!’ Gregor announced and grabbed two fragmentation grenades from his webbing and threw them into the horde of advancing aliens to give us more time. He hit the quick release on his railgun’s gyroscopic harness and let it slide off him and into the gory mud. Then he drew his personal defence weapon from its holster on his hip, unfolded the magazine and started firing burst after burst. It was a poor substitute for the railgun.

I found the loss in firepower telling when a Berserk darted through our overlapping fields of fire. It took a lot of hits, the impacts causing its strangely liquid flesh to ripple. It swung up at me with a serrated blade, cutting off the end of my SAW and through my inertial and subcutaneous armour, scraping off my breastplate as it dug deep into my armpit. It really fucking hurt. I was lifted off my feet screaming. Muscles spasmed as I fired off the rest of the magazine in my SAW. Dorcas put the barrel of his carbine against the Berserk and kept firing into it as it reached up with its other hand and grabbed my flailing forearm and pulled. What I had thought was painful was nothing compared to having my arm torn off.

The Berserk seemed to shake itself apart as a result of Dorcas’s sustained fire. I fell into the mud and there was an awful moment before my implanted pain management systems kicked in and started depleting my internal drugs reservoirs. I sat there feeling numb. My torn-off arm was pointing at me, as if in accusation.

Dorcas’s rescue of me had left a hole in our fields of fire. He was struggling to reload his carbine when a Berserk’s clawed foot drove him into the mud next to me. I turned to look at him numbly. He was screaming, but in anger rather than pain. The foot squeezed and blood started to run from multiple head wounds. His head had been pushed to one side as he tried to bring his carbine to bear. The Berserk put the barrel of its weapon gauntlet against Dorcas’s head, which exploded as the mud and viscera below it turned to steam in the beam of black light.

I was trying to drag my Benelli from its smartgrip back scabbard, but it was over my right shoulder and I couldn’t quite reach it with my left arm. Even through the fugue of painkillers and shock I knew I was just going through the motions. The Berserk that had killed Dorcas turned to me. Oh well, I thought, I’d killed a lot more of Them than They had of me. I started to giggle. I was tired. It seemed to be leaning slowly forward and reaching for my head, but then time moves differently on boosted reflexes and speed.

Then something really weird happened. Suddenly there were two large angry quadrupeds hanging off the Berserk. They seemed to be dogs, but that was clearly ridiculous. Who would bring dogs out here? Big dogs with lots of cybernetics that included boosted muscles and power-assisted steel jaws. These jaws were now deep in the Berserk and pulling it over as they savaged it.

The Berserk managed to throw one of the dogs off. It rolled, came to a skidding halt and was back up on all fours immediately. It looked like it should be growling but it didn’t make any noise, or no noise I could pick up through my filters. The second dog succeeded in dragging the Berserk to the ground, but the alien grabbed the dog’s head and triggered a long burst from the shard gun on its weapon appendage, reducing the dog to clumps of meat and cybernetic components.

The Berserk was staggering to its feet when another, much larger shape hit it. At first I thought it was another dog, as it had charged the Berserk on all fours. Whatever it was swung forelimb after forelimb into the Berserk as it rode it to the ground. As I watched the thing’s hands come away covered in black ichor, I realised that it was a man. It was someone fighting a Berserk hand-to-hand. Which was insane.

The man turned to look at me and grinned. He had ichor around an enlarged and protruding mouth filled with steel canines. He had a lot of modifications, his physiology all wrong. He was built more like a predatory beast. His legs bent the wrong way; his arms were long, enabling him to run on all fours. He had a SAW slung across his back but it seemed he preferred hand-to-hand combat.

‘Incoming!’ Gregor, I think.

The rocket contrails that filled the sky were one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, right up until they blossomed into a danger-close firestorm that seriously thinned the numbers of Them about to overwhelm us.

The feeling of heat on my face made me smile until it started to burn me. It was a minor concern. I was on a lot of drugs now. I decided to stand up. It was difficult but seemed to work. This provided me with a new perspective. There were more of the modified humans and dogs going toe-to-toe with Them. I watched as three cyborgs and two dogs brought a Walker down. I’d never seen anything like it.

Shaz’s mantra requesting air support had gone. It had been replaced by a heavily accented voice demanding immediate extraction. English obviously wasn’t the speaker’s first language but air and fire support command used it as default.

I heard the unmistakable sound of rapid-firing railguns as two eight-wheeled APCs moved in to support their dismounted troops. The APCs’ empty rocket batteries were still smoking.

I felt I should help and drew the Mastodon. A Berserk moved in front of me, obscuring my view of the monstrous psychopath who had just killed a Berserk with his bare hands. I walked towards the Berserk, firing the Mastodon again and again. The massive rounds were breaking through the chitinous armour and causing ripples all through its body. The huge revolver ran out of ammunition but I kept pulling the trigger.

The Berserk dissipated and I saw the predatory cyborg grinning at me toothily. He was holding an enormous automatic pistol, its barrel smoking. He didn’t seem to mind that I was pointing the Mastodon at him and dry-firing it.

‘We are out of ammunition!’ he shouted at me. He was speaking slowly, like he was talking to a child. The Mastodon’s hammer came down on an empty chamber. ‘We will need your guns to cover the extraction!’

‘Negative.’ Shaz over the tac net. ‘They won’t come to an LZ this hot.’

‘Your APCs are the best way out.’ Gregor, also over the tac net.

‘They will come for us,’ he assured us and then over the tac net to Command: ‘If my people and I die here we will find the pilots responsible and kill them and their families. We will eat their children as an example. You know we can do this. I want immediate extraction.’ Eastern European. I was absurdly pleased that I had traced the accent. What he was saying didn’t make sense. How could he eat children if he was dead?

A centaur galloped past me. Maybe I was dead or Mudge had slipped me something. Maybe both. There was more than one. Centaur cybrids armed with sabres were charging Them. I barely heard Command acknowledge the extraction request as I tried to make sense of what was going on.

‘This is how much shit we are in,’ the cheerful eastern European voice said over the tac net as another window appeared in my IVD. It was an aerial shot from a remote. We were the not-so-calm eye of a huge storm of Them. From all directions I could see sprinting Walkers and Berserks trying to get close to us. It looked like someone had kicked over an ants’ nest.

More missile contrails, this time from over the horizon, as our rescuers used smartlink data from us to target danger-close air support. Gregor grabbed me and pulled me down as more fire blossomed all around us. Suddenly the ground was dry and burned and we were steaming.

Despite the drugs and the shock, watching a Russian heavy-lift Sky Fortress gunship fly in at nap-of-the-Earth firing all its weapons was truly awesome. I just gaped. My only real excuse was that having one arm makes it difficult to reload a revolver. Didn’t stop Mudge telling me to do so as he reloaded his AK-47.

I felt the howling gale of the Sky Fortress’s twelve engines, three in each corner of the massive armoured aircraft, as it flew overhead and started to drop towards the mud. It cleared away swathes of Them with railgun and cannon fire. Point defence lasers formed a grid of light in the sky as they shot down incoming Them missiles. The huge craft rocked as some of the missiles made it through, exploding against its pitted armour plate. It didn’t land so as not to risk sinking into the mud. The wind from the heavy-duty vectored thrust engines blew everything away that wasn’t nailed down. That was the last I saw of my arm.

Door gunners opened fire as the massive rear cargo hatch opened. This was when I had expected us all to run into it and fly away, but our rescuers wanted to get their APCs on board. I wondered if this was because they looked so cool with wolf mouths painted around the cabs of the vehicles.

Gregor organised the Wild Boys to cover the vehicles being loaded. The Sky Fortress’s weapons aided us. The cargo crew were resupplying our rescuers with ammunition and they joined in, laying down blistering amounts of fire. I was still pointing and firing my empty Mastodon.

‘On! Now!’ Gregor was in my face dragging me into the cavernous cargo bay. We joined the strangely silent dogs and the cybrid centaurs. The dogs’ maws were covered in black ichor. The centaurs’ sabres were dripping with the same.

I heard engines scream. The Sky Fortress lurched and seemed to slide forward. The aerial view from the remote showed the front of the gunship covered in Berserks. The airframe seemed to be trying to shake itself to pieces but finally the Sky Fortress took to the sky, Berserks tumbling off. I heard nearly every type of Them munitions hitting the armour of the mighty gunship.

‘They come for us, yes?’ the one who had rescued me asked. I nodded. He was covered head to foot in ichor. ‘What I don’t like about them is there is nothing to eat.’ He picked at his armour. ‘What is this? Liquid. I want to taste flesh.’ He reached down and ruffled the hair of one of the fearsome-looking dogs. ‘I am Vladimir!’ he suddenly shouted. I think I may have jumped. I was wound pretty tight. He swept his hands over his assembled troops. ‘These are my Vucari!’

‘Wild Boys,’ I managed to say and then sat down hard as Brownie crouched next to me opening his med kit.

It felt like a throbbing white-hot knife had been shoved into my skull, and now there were people near. It was still dark. I could hear the whine from a number of small hover vehicles and whinnying from a horse.

I rapidly assembled the compound bow I’d bought in Dundee. It had been made on the Rigs by a one-armed Royal Engineers vet out of salvaged plastic and metal. She was a superb craftswoman. I’d always been impressed by her stuff but never able to afford any of it. The pull on the bow had been adjusted to take into account my boosted strength. Overkill for the deer I was planning on hunting, but I’d need it if I pissed off a bear. I strapped the case of arrows to my belt. The arrows had been machined by the Engineers’ vet from carbon fibre and steel, with plastic flights.

I headed out of the tent and headed rapidly at a right angle from the direction of the vehicles and horse, keeping low as I moved through the woods. I could hear people talking now but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.

I wanted eyes-on. I lay down in the wet undergrowth and slowly and what I hoped was quietly began crawling towards the edge of the woods. I reached the treeline and looked down the slope of the hill. There were six of them. The lowlight capability of my eyes amplified the ambient light and gave my vision a green tinge. I zoomed in. Five of them were sitting on upmarket civilian versions of the scout hovers favoured by Mudge on Sirius. The sixth guy was on a horse, holding the reins of another saddled horse missing its rider. I looked around but saw no one.

The four on the hover bikes seemed excited about something judging by their animated conversation. They wore what looked like expensive outdoor gear that hadn’t seen much of the outdoors. All of them were either holding some kind of expensive shotgun or hunting rifle or had similar weapons in sheaths attached to their scout hovers. If they had implants I couldn’t tell, which probably meant they were wealthy and could afford the sort of cybernetics that didn’t look like cybernetics. They all had either gymnasium-toned builds or were getting plump, which was a distinct sign of wealth. I wondered what they were out hunting. Me?

The one on the horse was different. He was quiet for a start. His outdoor gear was expensive but practical and well used. There was no sign of implants but his face was quite badly scarred and even by the way he shifted in his saddle and scanned the area I could tell he was a veteran. He was weather-beaten and had a hard look to him. He was also older than the others. He looked to be in his fifties, which again suggested money.

‘Jakob Douglas!’ the one on the horse shouted.

How’d they know? Of course. My talk with God — all they had to do was ask. I suppressed a groan.

‘I’m Calum Laird. This is my land,’ he continued. ‘Come out. We’d just like to talk.’ At these words there was laughter from the other five. They were beginning to look like a drunk lynch party to me.

Fuck it, might as well meet the neighbours. I stood up and stepped out of the treeline, bow drawn taught, arrow notched.

‘What do you want?’ I called.

Everyone jumped bar the guy on the horse. They either reached for their weapons or started to bring the ones they were holding to bear on me. I loosed an arrow at the fastest one. It hit the side of the scout hover close to his leg and penetrated deep into the vehicle’s engine block. I was impressed with the bow and my accidental accuracy. The man yelped and the scout hover slowly sank to the ground. I had another arrow notched.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ I warned. The guy on the horse still hadn’t moved. ‘I just want to be left in peace.’

‘You’re squatting, you filth!’ the chubby guy on the recently murdered scout hover said.

‘Alasdair, that’s enough,’ Calum said, then to me: ‘I just want to run my land without trespassers moving in. So I guess we don’t always get what we want.’ It wasn’t a Highland accent — he came from further south — but I couldn’t place it. His tone was even and there was no trace of the upper-class accent of his companions.

‘Looks like you’ve got a lot of room here. You’ll barely notice I’m here and I’ll only hunt when I have to.’

‘It’s his land, you piece of terrorist scum!’ Alasdair practically squealed. There was muttered assent from the other four riders. So it seemed Alasdair had an opinion on the events at the Atlantis Spoke.

‘Alasdair, is it?’ Alasdair didn’t respond. ‘You open your mouth to me again and I’ll spit your piggy head with an arrow. Do you understand me?’

I didn’t want to kill but this guy was really rubbing me the wrong way. Alasdair started to open his mouth and I wondered if I could hit a testicle with the bow.

‘Shut up, Alasdair,’ Laird said quietly. This was a man used to giving orders. ‘I know who you are: 5 Para Pathfinders, SAS, mutineer, dishonourably discharged, Atlantis, what little we know about what went on in the Dog’s Teeth. Impressive record but you sound like a lot of trouble.’

‘That’s all behind me. Like I say, I just want to be left alone.’

‘I’m not so sure it’s that easy, your cavalier attitude to rights of ownership aside…’

‘I lived in an eight-by-eight plastic cube with no fucking windows. How much room do you need?’

‘Hey, I worked for this, pal!’ Now he seemed to be getting angry. There was obviously a bit of street in him.

‘If you’ve read my record then you know I’ve worked for a living.’

There was a snort of derision. ‘Look, I respect your record, but that aside, I let you live here, where does it stop? People are already trying to break out of the cities and move onto land they have no right to.’

‘You shouldn’t use the cities as prisons then. Maybe give everyone an equal chance at the good life.’

‘Where do you think I come from?’ he demanded.

I wasn’t sure so I didn’t answer. ‘So where do you want to go from here?’ I asked instead. ‘Because I’m pretty sure I can get all six of you.’ Though the other horse was bothering me.

‘I’m pretty sure you can’t get any of us, otherwise I wouldn’t have come up here.’ He seemed pretty sure of himself. Now that horse was really beginning to bug me. ‘Though I’ve a better idea. Instead of you getting dead, why don’t we go back to the house, have a dram and talk this over.’

Alasdair opened his mouth to protest.

‘I will fucking shoot you, Alasdair,’ I warned him. His mouth closed with an audible click of teeth on teeth. ‘That seems reasonable as long as the conversation ends with me staying here and being left alone.’

‘We’ll see. Kenny?’ Kenny seemed to rise out of the ground behind me. Kenny was wearing a gillie suit and pointing an old but perfectly serviceable hunting rifle with a big enough calibre to make a mess of even someone as augmented as I was. He had black plastic lenses for eyes and was obviously a vet. I lowered the bow. Kenny lowered the hunting rifle.

‘Right you are, Mr Laird,’ Kenny said. His West Highland accent marked him as a local.