War in Heaven

4

Laird lived in a fucking castle! So this was how the other half lived. I’d come to the conclusion that I’d been bored. Maybe I’d wanted to get caught. Maybe I wanted the drama. They’d heard the trumpet and thought it was an animal. What they called a crypto-zoological specimen. With Them living inside me I guess I was to an extent.

We were in the cellar, except I don’t think it’s called a cellar if it’s under a castle. Dungeon? It was basically a large underground room of ancient-looking stone with a vaulted ceiling and sand on the floor. It was filled with a lot of Laird’s friends and associates, many of whom were cheering or else shouting and screaming. I was half the reason; the other half was trying to kick me in the face. I was loving it. Pit fighting in Lochee was never like this. Of course, I was some kind of hybrid now.

I leaned back out of the way of the roundhouse kick, putting my left hand down on the sand as his leg spun over me. I pushed myself back upright and jabbed him twice in the side of the head. He tried to spin away but instead turned into a hook that picked him up off his feet and sent him crashing to the ground.

I felt fucking great. I felt faster, stronger. I was grinning as I spat blood out. Stripped to the waist and holding my arms up like a champion as the crowd cheered more enthusiastically than they ever had at Doogie’s Pit Fighting Emporium.

People came up to congratulate me. I was handed a very generous dram of Glenmorangie as they pounded my back. I took a mouthful, blood and whisky mingling in the glass, the whisky stinging the cuts in my mouth. I towelled off the blood and the sweat from my body. Calum smiled at me from where he was standing. I grinned back and spat some more blood out onto the sand.

It seemed the other half lived just like us, only more enthusiastically and in more style and comfort. It seemed nobody got tired of watching otherwise healthy grown adults beat the shit out of each other. And I was feeling no pain tonight.

Laird was all right for a rich guy. I’d checked with God. He’d grown up in Stirling, like Gregor had, though he was much older. He’d been an NCO with the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders and fought on Sirius before I’d got there and later on the freezing wastes of Proxima Prime, where he’d received a battlefield commission. He’d traded on the commission for education and contacts, and after he’d served his term gone into business for himself.

His education had been in law and now he went looking for clever projects that the corporations did not already own. He’d found a new way of moulding ceramics for use in missiles and components for remotes designed for vacuum. He’d gone into business with the young genius who had developed the application and stopped her from being completely exploited by the corporations. This had basically meant navigating a dangerous labyrinth of trade and contract law. They had diversified and he had not looked back since. His wealth allowed him a spectacle like this and the ability to play lord of the manor.

The next fighter flew through the air at me. I rolled forward under his flying kick. This guy was the favourite. This was the fighter Alasdair had been grooming.

I rolled back up onto my feet and spun round just in time to block some of a flurry of kicks aimed at my body and head. Even the blocked ones caused me to stagger back. The kid was fast, not as strong as me but obviously skilled. His style seemed mainly some form of Kung Fu with bits and pieces pulled from other forms to help with the practicalities of fighting in this kind of arena.

He threw a fast kick at my head. I spun out of the way and kicked his supporting leg. He went with the blow and threw himself into a full reverse spinning kick, apparently not learning his lesson. I ducked low and threw my own spinning kick under his guard. The length of my leg smacked into the top of his body and my foot caught him on the chin. It knocked him back, but the crowd cheered as he turned the retreat into a showy backflip. How come I’m winning and he’s being cheered?

Deciding the long game wasn’t for him, he tried to close with me. I lifted my knees to block a flurry of low, sharp, fast kicks and used my arms to protect my head from an equally rapid flurry of hand strikes. I then side-kicked him repeatedly in the chest and elbowed him in the face hard enough to knock him to the ground.

I was bringing my fist back to deliver the coup de grace when he kicked me in the side of the head from the ground. I staggered away and he flipped back up onto his feet. More cheering from the crowd. Still, the kid was young, had been good-looking and was probably not as augmented as I was. I should have been feeling like a bully but this was the most fun I’d had kickboxing since I use to train with my mum.

He moved into a graceful stance, and I raised my fists into a much less graceful boxer’s stance. He smiled at me through the blood and I nodded, smiling back. Good kid, good fighter. Again this sort of thing was missing from the desperation of the Dundee pits. Time to destroy him.

His kick was fast, powerful, well aimed and beautifully executed. Mine was a short, brutal, front kick delivered with no finesse whatsoever but with a lot of power. The energy of his kick was broken on my elbows, though it hurt. I felt something give as my foot hit him in the waist area and drove him back.

He tried another kick. I just kicked again with the other foot. Booing. Who gives a fuck? So I’m the villain? This time, after I knocked him back, I was up in the air and hit him on the crown of his head with a flying elbow. Again he fell back. I did not relent. I threw myself into the air again. My knee caught him under the chin. His head flew back in a spray of blood. I had all the time in the world to deliver the reverse spinning kick to his face. Somehow he was still standing after that so I delivered another and then spun low and swept his legs out from underneath him. The kid hit the sand a mess.

‘Yes!’ I was roaring holding my arms up. I felt like there was a feral expression on my face. There was as much booing as there was cheering. The kid was carried off. I noticed that Alasdair was glaring at me. Fuck him. What was he going to do?

Drinks were thrust into my hand, more backslapping. I even saw some of the well-turned-out salon-pretty girls, who moments before had been screaming for my blood like everyone else, look my way.

I pushed through the congratulatory crowd to where Calum had just sat down. He smiled as he looked up at my blood-covered body.

‘Do you want a drink or a medic?’

‘I’ve had worse,’ I said, slumping into a seat as he passed me another drink and both of us exchanged words about the fight with some of his hangers-on. The music started again and people started to drift away as if at some hidden signal from Calum. I was catching my breath and drinking more bloody whisky.

‘Cigar?’ Calum asked. I was about to refuse. ‘It’s from Barney’s four, pre-war.’

What the hell! Let’s see what all the fuss was about. I took the cigar and he lit it for me.

‘So, is the extent of your ambition to squat on my land and poach? Because if so, we can sort something out.’

‘I don’t think ambition is something that people like me have. Life’s pretty good at the moment.’ If we ignored the impending war, which I was getting quite good at, and didn’t think about Morag — less good at that. ‘I just don’t want to…’ I searched for a way to explain myself.

‘Suffer any more?’

I gave this some thought.

‘Yeah, actually.’

‘So do I have this right — you’re recently independently wealthy?’

‘I guess.’

‘Do you want more money?’

‘For what?’

‘I followed your exploits, read Howard Mudgie’s stories and watched the footage that he shot. I’m not sure I agree with what you did, and certainly it’s causing me a lot of trouble with industrial espionage and bidding for work, but what you accomplished was astonishing. I can always use someone with your skill set. I’m not sure what for. Maybe security, something like that.’

‘No, I mean what would I need more money for?’ As far as I could tell, I had all the money I was ever going to need. I could go out in a hail of jazz, single malt whisky and sense booth immersion if I wanted. Calum stared at me and then burst out laughing. I was getting a bit pissed off at this.

‘What?’ I demanded. ‘I’m not kidding. I’ve got everything I need.’ This just made him laugh harder.

‘You live in a tent,’ he managed red-faced.

‘We don’t all need a fucking castle.’

This just made him laugh harder. Eventually he managed to control himself. I think he would have been wiping tears away if his eyes hadn’t been expensive designer implants.

‘You like it out here?’ he finally asked.

‘Yeah, ’course. What’s not to like?’

‘What about a house out here? If you chose to settle down you’d have security for your family. That sort of thing.’

This sounded completely foreign to my ears — I suspect because it was starting to sound a bit like a future. I didn’t have to worry so much about where the next dram, cigarette or booth session was coming from. Maybe I could even make plans. This didn’t seem like such a bad life. Admittedly the ones like Alasdair were arseholes, but a lot of them were okay and they seemed to like me.

‘I’m not some corporate assassin. I’m not a leg-breaker or -’ I nodded at the bloody sand ‘- a gladiator, despite what you may think.’

‘This?’ He looked around. The majority of his guests were younger than Calum. ‘You’ve got to do certain things in my position. A bit of wealth and it’s easy to pick up parasites.’ I grinned at this. ‘I’ve seen real combat. This doesn’t interest me. Involve yourself in it as much or as little as you want.’

It had occurred to me earlier in the evening when I was less drunk that Kenny wasn’t here. Kenny was an actual proper gillie. He’d not said much on the way to the castle but I’d found out later from Calum that he’d known Kenny during the war and now employed him as a groundsman and gamekeeper. That appealed to me. I wondered if I could work with Kenny. It would be the same sort of thing that my dad had done, except if some rich bastard tried to have me killed they’d be in for a bit of a surprise.

‘I’m not looking for muscle. Maybe security or even bodyguarding work. You could think of yourself as a soldier with better pay, conditions and fewer hazards. The remuneration would also be well worth your while.’

I raised an eyebrow. This was sounding better and better.

‘Daddy!’ A remarkably pretty, tall slender blonde in a little black dress suddenly landed in my lap. She wrapped her arms around me. She had blue eyes and I reckoned she was in her early twenties. ‘Who’s your new friend?’ she demanded.

Calum sighed good-naturedly. ‘Fiona, this is Jake.’ I let the contraction of my name go. ‘Jake, this is my daughter Fiona.’ She wrinkled her nose at the sound of her name.

‘I know. Horrible name, isn’t it? Daddy had me before he got money and taste. Everybody calls me Fi.’

‘Lass, you’re going to get covered in muck,’ I warned her. Sweat and blood were still drying all over my body.

‘That’s okay,’ she said in a way that made me uncomfortable because her dad was sitting opposite. The wriggling in my lap didn’t help either. ‘I loved watching you fight,’ she said, running a fingernail across my chest. ‘Very sexy.’ She leaned in close to me and bit my ear. This was deeply awkward. Calum just looked on indulgently. The thought occurred to me that this girl was in need of a good spanking. Then I wished the thought hadn’t occurred because I was sure she’d just enjoy it. I also couldn’t get her off my lap now because there was evidence of her presence.

I was as pleased to see Alasdair as I was ever going to be. At least focusing on him would help me get rid of the evidence. She seemed happy to remain draped around me. The kid I’d fought was with Alasdair. He seemed the worse for wear but was up and smiling.

‘Good fight, Robert,’ Calum said with grace.

‘Excuse me, love,’ I said to Fiona as I managed to shift her from my lap and stand up, hopefully without her father noticing my partial erection. ‘Aye, good fight,’ I said, shaking Robert’s hand. ‘Sadly, old age and treachery tend to win out over youth, vigour and skill.’

‘I’m no sure about that,’ Robert said. ‘You kick like a bloody mule and I reckon you’re every bit as fast as me.’ He sounded impressed. He seemed a likeable enough kid. Alasdair looked less impressed.

To what degree had They augmented me? I felt fitter than when I’d been eighteen.

‘Aye, well I’ve been doing this for a while and, you know, experience helps.’

Robert opened his mouth to reply.

‘Robert, be a good chap. You’ve disgraced me enough for one night, do piss off,’ Alasdair said. I didn’t like this guy. I bit back a reply because I was a guest. Robert glanced at Alasdair and rolled his eyes before nodding to me and heading off. I sat back down and tried to ignore him. I was less than pleased that Fiona climbed back onto my lap.

‘The kid did well — he’s a good fighter. You shouldn’t be so hard on him,’ Calum told Alasdair.

‘I’ve invested so much in him and he’s such a disappointment. I’ve a mind to drop him back in the shithole I found him in.’

‘That kid’s victories aren’t yours because you’ve spent some fucking money,’ I said, trying to get a dangerous tone in my voice.

‘You misunderstand, Sergeant Douglas. His victories are mine because he belongs to me.’

I’d learned something with Mudge in London. When you’re mixing with people like this you couldn’t just elbow them in the face when they annoyed you. I wasn’t sure why; apparently it just wasn’t the done thing. Shame really. This guy had obviously grown up not being elbowed in the face enough when he was talking shit. This meant that he thought it was okay to talk shit. I wasn’t sure it was entirely his fault — after all his parents had called him Alasdair.

‘What can I do for you, Alasdair?’ Calum asked, sounding more than a little pissed off.

‘Yes, Alasdair, you’re being a bore,’ Fiona added.

‘You’re ex-SAS, aren’t you?’ Alasdair asked me. I ignored him. He’d looked it up but I still wasn’t giving the little shit the satisfaction.

‘He won’t talk about it,’ Calum told Alasdair.

‘Why? He made sure we could read about it on the web. Desperate for attention, were you?’ I continued ignoring him. This was good for me, I decided. It would help me build up tolerance. ‘Hardly a fair fight then, was it?’ he demanded. ‘I have a proposition. Three of my men would be happy to fight him. Mr Douglas’s dubious exploits are well known; it shouldn’t be too much of a challenge for him.’ I was trying not to look at the smug impression on his podgy face because I knew it would drive me towards violence.

Calum sighed. ‘Look, Alasdair, you lost a fight. Why don’t you leave it?’

‘What? Is he frightened?’

‘Look, will you just fuck off, you little prick?’ I suggested.

‘I think you’re frightened,’ he said in what I think might have been the most patronising tone I’d ever heard. He’d also raised his voice and I realised that he was playing to the audience. There were boos. I was determined not to bow to peer-group pressure, particularly as they weren’t my peer group.

‘Oh do it!’ Fiona was suddenly shrill in my ear. Then she leaned in close to me. ‘Do it for me,’ she whispered, pouting. ‘Put the little tosser in his place. I’ll make it worth your while.’ She ground herself into my lap. Calum was looking everywhere but at her.

‘Everyone!’ Alasdair announced, turning to the crowd. ‘Sergeant Douglas, scourge of our privacy, is too frightened to fight!’

There was a lot of booing.

‘I’m really sorry about this,’ Calum said. ‘You may want to consider doing it for a quiet life.’

‘Please?’ Fiona pouted.

I swore under my breath and stood up, almost dumping Fiona on the floor in doing so. There was cheering. Alasdair turned around and managed an insincere smile.

‘I don’t suppose you want to get into the ring, do you?’ I asked him.

‘I’m afraid my fighting days are over,’ he said. I’ll bet, I thought.

I made my way back onto the sand. The crowd parted for me. Three on one were not good odds. I wondered what I was doing. Was I trying to impress these people? The girl? Her dad? Why?

The crowd parted, forming three channels from three different directions. The two guys and the girl who came out were solidly built. They moved like they knew how to handle themselves and one of the guys and the girl had matt-black lenses for eyes. The third guy had more expensive lenses but the Royal Marine Commando tattoo on his chest gave him away as a veteran as well.

The woman carried a basket-hilted broadsword of the kind I’d seen decorating the walls of Calum’s castle. Except this one looked sharp and well balanced. She held the sword — I think it was called a claymore — in one hand and a round wooden shield reinforced with iron studs in the other. The guy who wasn’t an ex-marine had a shaved head and his face was a patchwork of scars. He carried a ball and chain in one hand and was already spinning the heavy-looking studded head of the weapon. In his off hand he also carried a shield. The ex-marine was carrying a fucking polearm. It looked like a meat cleaver on the end of a six-foot shaft. Above the cleaver blade was a hook. I wondered if he was expecting cavalry.

If I wasn’t going to risk dying for something worthwhile like murdering Rolleston then I certainly wasn’t going to risk dying in this cellar. I didn’t care what they thought of me. I had nothing to prove. I shook my head and turned to walk away. The problem was, with them all coming from different directions I had to pass one of them.

The woman with the claymore swung at me. I just managed to dance out of the way.

‘What the fuck! Are you insane?! I’m not fucking interested!’ She just smiled at me and remained poised to attack. I tried to walk into the crowd but was faced by a solid wall of screaming rich people, their features twisted in expectation. They wanted to see blood.

They did. The hook on the polearm ripped into my shoulder. It had enough boosted muscle behind it to penetrate the subcutaneous armour. The ex-marine ripped the hook down, tearing open part of my back. I almost fell to my knees. He tore the weapon out of me and then short-swung the cleaver blade at my head. I only just managed to duck out of the way.

I turned to the side as the claymore whistled through the air. The blade hit my metal arm and only succeeded in scoring it. It was a heavy blade and I was faster than her. As she readied another blow I tried to kick her in the head with as much force as I could muster. She got the shield up just in time but I heard it crack and she staggered away from me.

My IVD jumped as the studded head of the ball and chain cracked me solidly in the skull and sent me staggering forward into the crowd. My blood spattered some of them but they were baying for more and I got pushed back into the ring. I found myself missing Balor and New York. The blow to the head made me feel sick.

This was the problem with fighting three people. The minute you tried to deal with one the other got you. As quickly as I could manage, I ducked under another swing of the ball and chain and hooked a kick around the scarred guy’s leg, bringing him down on one knee. I flung myself out of the way of a downward strike from the polearm and threw myself towards the swordswoman. She hadn’t been expecting me to close so quickly and aimed a hurried blow at me, but I grabbed her shield and yanked it towards her sword arm, messing up her strike.

I moved behind her, using her for cover as the polearm hit her shield, then reached around to grab her forehead and yanked her head back as I brought my knee up into the back of her skull. I sidestepped as she stumbled back and four nine-inch blades extended from my knuckles on either hand. I punched her in her sword arm. Three of the four blades on that fist punched clean through her arm and momentarily pinioned her arm to her side. I ripped the blades out and kicked her knee as she continued staggering back. I heard it break. She tumbled to the ground and I stamped on her head.

I didn’t want to kill her and I was pretty sure I hadn’t. She was obviously an augmented combat vet. But I didn’t want her getting up behind me as I tried to deal with the other two.

The crowd went wild.

I turned and ran towards the shaven-headed guy. He saw me coming and swung at me. I twisted as I ran and tried to deflect the blow with my prosthetic arm. The chain wrapped around it. The blade of the polearm wielded by the marine hit me solidly in the back and I screamed. It went through my subcutaneous armour and bit into my reinforced spine, but he would have had to hit a lot harder to sever it.

I leaped into the air and felt the blade tear out of my back. Scarface tried to put his shield between him and me. I landed on it. He buckled under my weight. I punched down with my claws. Boosted muscle pushed the carbon-fibre blades through the wood and iron shield and into his shoulder. He cried out. I twisted the blades, hoping to render his shield arm useless.

Scarface yanked on the ball and chain’s wooden handle. The chain was still wrapped around my arm. I fell awkwardly onto the ground. I had a moment to realise that the polearm blade was flying towards my head. I rolled out of the way and sand flew as the blade hit the ground. I yanked the chain that still connected me to the ball and chain, jerking Scarface towards me, and kicked out with a sweep, taking his legs from him. I axed my foot down into his face with as much power as I could muster and was rewarded with the satisfying noise of subcutaneous armour, bone and cartilage being crushed. His face looked like it had been split. Blood spurted from his mouth and nose.

I rolled out of the way of another polearm blow, towards Scarface and, just to make sure he wasn’t going to get up and come after me, rammed my claws through both his kneecaps and into the muscle and flesh of his lower legs and then tore them back out. I left him a screaming, bleeding, crippled mess on the floor.

Then I stood up and turned to face the marine. He was backing off. I stared at him as I unwrapped the ball and chain from around my prosthetic arm. The crowd were jeering him. A polearm is great in a medieval infantry line working in conjunction with others. Less good one on one, particularly against an opponent with paired weapons.

I paced left and right looking for an opening. He was making half-hearted thrusts towards me, trying to keep me at bay. I charged him. He swung at me. I parried easily and was past the weapon’s reach. Then he did something I’d rarely seen marines do. He turned and ran. The problem was he didn’t have anywhere to go. He ran straight into the crowd, who pushed him back. He started throwing punches and I saw one rich guy’s nose explode as the marine tried to fight his way through. But by that point I’d thrown myself into the air.

I landed on his back and pushed both sets of blades through his shoulders. I didn’t want to kill him but I was really, really angry. There was resistance as I pushed through his subcutaneous armour. The blades appeared from his chest and the crowd became more excited as more of them were spattered with blood.

I pulled the marine down on top of me. He kept screaming as I used my claws in his flesh to turn him over so I was astride him and he was face down on the sand. Then to the wild screaming cheers of the crowd I grabbed the back of his head and rammed his face into the ground until blood seeped out into the sand around him and he stopped moving.

I didn’t care if I had killed him. I stood up. I was covered with blood, some of it mine, most of it not.

‘Where is he?!’ I was panting for breath but I still managed to scream hoarsely. I was scanning the room for Alasdair. I could see Fiona watching. She had a hungry grin on her face.

Of course they turned on him. They were laughing. He wasn’t; he was sobbing and begging as I made my way through the crowd towards him. Anyone who got in the way had their legs kicked out from under them or got an elbow in the face.

As I reached him he turned and started to beg. I grabbed him by the throat, lifted him off his feet and carried him through the crowd by his neck until I could slam him into the wall.

I pulled my arm back and extended my blades. Fiona was standing next to me. The look of expectation on her face was almost sexual. Her look turned to one of disgust as Alasdair soiled himself. There was laughter. Someone grabbed my arm. I whipped my head round ready to hurt someone else and saw Calum there.

‘No!’ he shouted. Then calmer: ‘You can’t do this, Jakob.’ There were sounds of disappointment from the crowd. I let Alasdair go and retracted my blades. He sank to the ground in a pool of his own muck.

‘What the fuck is wrong with you people?’ I asked, shaking my head. I was disgusted, as much with myself as with them. I wouldn’t fight to do something worthwhile like kill Rolleston but I’d become a spectacle, entertainment for these scum. These were the people that the Cabal had worked to protect.

‘You could have stopped this,’ I said accusingly to Calum.

‘I told you. A man in my position is expected to provide entertainment for his guests. Though I may not like it.’

I couldn’t think of anything else to say. We may as well have been from different species.

‘If I’ve killed one of those three,’ I said, pointing back towards the broken bodies lying on the sand, then I’m coming back here and killing him.’

Calum held his hand up in a placatory gesture. ‘Look, why don’t you let Fiona patch up your wounds?’

‘C’mon, Jakob, please?’ Fiona took hold of my arm. The concern in her voice lacked sincerity. I shook her off and stormed from the cellar, grabbing a bottle of whisky off a table as I did so.

I’d taken worse beatings, notably at Rannu’s hands, but this seemed even more pointless than my fight in New York. I emptied about a quarter of the bottle of Glenmorangie into my mouth, just managing to swallow it before crying out as I forced too much whisky into my system and it burned my cuts. I leaned heavily against the wall of the corridor.

‘Are you okay?’ Fiona asked, her voice full of mock concern.

‘Oh just fuck off, will you,’ I told her wearily.

‘Daddy wants me to make sure you’re okay. I want to make sure you’re okay,’ she said coquettishly. I wasn’t coping well with this.

My head jerked round to stare at her. How fucking bored and jaded was she? She leaned in and kissed me. I tried not to think of Morag as I returned the kiss. Or rather I tried to think about all the things about Morag that angered me.

Anger was the emotion of this fuck. And that’s all it was, a fuck. Watching your partner through thermographics during sex can be beautiful. Looking at the colours and how they shift and change as they become hotter. The internal blush of sex. In this case I did it so I didn’t have to look at her.

She was wild in bed but less than happy when I called her Morag. There was screaming and slamming of doors. I didn’t care. I had the rest of a bottle of Glenmorangie to drink. The bed looked like someone had been murdered in it. I should have got my injuries sorted out but I was so tired.

Of course they were Spetsnaz. Who else could they be? And we owed them big time. Lieutenant Vladimir Skirov and his Vucari. The name was from some ancient Russian werewolf myth. Skirov and his people claimed that they weren’t try-too-hards who wanted to be scary but rather that the idea of warewolves, as they called themselves, made sound tactical sense. Having seen them in action I could see what they meant. The physiological changes that allowed them to run on all fours made them a lot faster. They had heavily augmented arms for the running, which gave them a lot of power in hand-to-hand, particularly with their steel-claw-tipped fingers. Their maws also gave them an edge in hand-to-hand combat. Assuming you didn’t mind getting a mouthful of what you’d bitten, and these guys didn’t.

The thing was, however, that Russian cybernetics and prosthetics, particularly military ones, where built for function and power rather than looks and finesse. They looked less like the sort of werewolves you’d see in horror vizzes, immersions and on street-gang augmentations, and much more like mechanical, faintly canine monstrosities. Mudge had told Skirov this earlier, which had caused Skirov to shoot vodka from his nostrils he was laughing so hard. Russians had an odd sense of humour.

They also drank a lot. Vladimir had told us proudly that, after combat, the biggest cause of casualties in the Russian armed forces was drinking non-beverage alcohol. I think a lot of what they drank was the fuel for alcohol-burning combat vehicles.

We owed the Vucari. This meant that we’d spent a week engaging in a fine tradition of the Regiment. Stealing. In this case every bit of alcohol we could find to say thank you. There was no doubt in any of our minds that without the timely presence of these cheerful Russian psychos we would have been dead.

We’d drunk to Dorcas. We’d drunk to the Spetsnaz who’d died on their patrol. Mudge had even suggested drinking to my arm. We’d drunk a lot.

Saturday night found us in the NCOs’ mess. Fortunately the lieutenant was not too proud to drink with enlisted and NCOs. I suspected he’d drink with the Berserks if they asked. The mess was a partially bombed-out bunker, a twisted labyrinth of tunnels with various chambers used for drinking. The deeper parts belonged to special forces and you took your life in your hands straying into them unless you happened to be a very pretty squaddie on a date with someone hard enough to look after you.

The cybrids weren’t Spetsnaz, they were Cossacks originally from southern Russia. The Cossacks often supported Russian special ops in much the same way the Special Forces Support Group did for British special forces and the Rangers did for the American Delta Force. They were lead by Captain Kost Skoropadsky. He was young and didn’t seem as big a wanker as many officers. He mainly kept quiet, and despite his higher rank tended to defer to Vladimir. The cybrids had removed their horse bodies and had attached cybernetic legs to become bipeds. I think they felt a little uncomfortable.

In the wake of the Organizatsiya’s takeover of the Russian Federation the Cossacks had rebelled and set up their own autonomous state of Cossackia. While Cossack regiments still fought with the Russian army, if they met Spetsnaz on the streets of Moscow there would probably be bloodshed as memories were long in that part of the world. The rebellion had badly bloodied both sides. However, these particular Cossacks were descendants of colonists on Sirius. The plains of Sirius, before the war at least, were close enough to the steppes of their homeland. They had bred horses before They had come, and when They had come the Cossacks did what they always did: they fought.

The cybrid centaur bodies had been developed to aid their horse ranching. They were capable of speeds comparable to many wheeled vehicles and had the ability to go places that wheeled vehicles just couldn’t. The Cossacks had soon found a new use for their cybrid bodies.

Kost told me that he had never even seen a real horse. They had all been killed before he was born. Sometimes he would go to the sense booths and go riding or just stroke one. He wondered if they had got their smell right.

The dogs were called Tosa-Inus, and were extensively modified Japanese fighting dogs. One of them had his head in Vladimir’s lap and he was scratching the animal behind its ears. I liked dogs. We’d been lucky enough to have one as a child. It was a working dog, a Border collie, but these were scary. They followed the Spetsnaz everywhere and were utterly silent. Vladimir explained that they’d had their vocal cords cut. I reached down to rub the back of one of their heads. The dog opened an eye and looked at me. The eye was a matt-black plastic lens, just like mine.

In some ways it was horrible that they were used as weapons but there was something comfortable about their presence here. It was like a parody of normality.

Service in the Spetsnaz practically guaranteed you a high-ranking enforcer position within the Organizatsiya. Many of Vladimir’s people were stripped to the waist and proudly sporting tattoos. Hundred of years ago they would have been prison tattoos, but to go to prison in Russia you have to commit a crime that the Organizatsiya did not approve. Most never made it to prison.

Mudge, who’d had to fight for his place in the mess and had nearly died in doing so, had pulled. Frankly, the huge warewolf Spetsnaz looked terrifying.

‘Won’t it be a bit like bestiality?’ I drunkenly asked him.

‘Yes!’ he shouted with altogether too much enthusiasm. I took this moment to head to the bar with some of my hard-earned back pay. I made my way through the crowd, knowing I was going to have to bargain to get reasonable-quality vodka. I say reasonable-quality — something that wouldn’t make you sterile. It was lucky that our eye implants meant we couldn’t go blind.

I glanced over to the corner and saw Buck and Gibby. They were a mess of dreadlocks and beards. Their dusters and hats were thrown over nearby chairs and girls and boys of the R amp;R regiment were entertaining them. I turned away trying to suppress my distaste. It wasn’t just that the R amp;R regiment made me uncomfortable, though they did. I preferred the full sensory immersion porn of the booths. Buck and Gibby were with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, also known as the Night Stalkers. They were superb pilots who flew missions in support of special operations. Except these two were chauffeurs for our nominal commanding officer Major Rolleston and his pet killer Josephine Bran, the Grey Lady. If Buck and Gibby were here, that meant that Rolleston and Bran were here, which in turn meant something shitty was about to happen to us.

After some bartering, cajoling and threats, I got the drinks and made my way back towards our table, carrying a number of bottles. This was possible because I’d also got my new arm. It was superb. High-spec, fantastic flesh/prosthetic neural interface; it pretty much felt like part of my body. The tactile sensors were high spec and it had integral sheaths for four new knuckle blades. Best of all it had a smartlinked but independently tracking and firing shoulder-mounted laser.

The new arm had become a thing of wonder among the Wild Boys. Special forces or not, it was very unusual for an NCO to get an arm this good, though Mudge had assured me that it was not as good-quality as his legs. Shaz had dug around and found that the limb had been meant for a high-ranking officer who’d lost his arm in a tank accident .

‘Do you know anyone called Nuada?’ he’d asked me.

‘No. Odd name. Why?’

‘Well it seems that it was Nuada — I’m guessing he’s a signalman somewhere — who had the arm redirected to you.’

‘Nice of him.’ But I was none the wiser. Maybe the officer in question had pissed this Nuada off.

The bottles of vodka were quickly taken from me and distributed. The Spetsnaz were good company but quite scary people. I would not want to get on the wrong side of them, or owe them money. They spent most of their time raiding, only coming back to resupply and cause havoc. They had an even higher level of operational intensity than we did, and that was saying something. Some of the scrapes they got in sounded very hairy and they appeared to be pretty much a law unto themselves.

I was watching one trying to impress Mudge, using his power-assisted steel maw to bite a chunk out of the metal table. Gregor, normally quiet even when drunk, was killing himself laughing at some story one of the Cossacks’ rail-gunners was telling him. I looked around the table. It was amazing the effect the Russians were having. So often our drinking bouts were maudlin because we knew that no matter what happened, how bad things got, we were going to have to go out and do it all over again. The Russians seemed at peace with that and perhaps even to relish it.

‘I have not yet eaten the human beef!’ Vladimir shouted. I think he was trying it on with Bibs, who sprayed vodka all over the table to shouts of derision from the rest of us.

‘I have,’ she announced when she finished choking on her vodka. ‘You’re not missing anything.’ Ash cracked up.

‘You’re a cannibal?’ I asked, surprised. Everyone else started laughing at me. ‘What?’ I demanded.

‘She’s talking about giving head, Jakob,’ Ash said somewhat patronisingly.

‘Surely that’s human pork?’ Mudge asked.

‘All human meat is pork,’ Gregor said. Everyone turned to look at him. ‘Pork-like.’ There was a long pause while we waited for him to qualify what he had said. ‘So I hear.’

‘You have only eaten the human meat if you bite down when you go down,’ one of the Spetsnaz warewolves said. I was pretty sure she was female. Ash, Bibby and the women with the Spetsnaz and Cossacks started laughing to cries of protest from the guys.

‘Andrea swallows,’ one of the other Spetsnaz said.

‘More importantly, I chew before I swallow. You should remember this, Vassily,’ the female Spetsnaz pointed out to more male cries of protest and female laughter. Ash clinked glasses with the woman.

‘Do you chew, Ash?’ I asked, grinning.

Ash looked down at my groin. ‘Chew what?’ she asked innocently. I’d asked for that. I tried not to worry too much that Bibs, who I’d had a one-night stand with a little while ago, was laughing the hardest.

‘You’d only taste cock implant anyway,’ Mudge said, trying to keep a straight face. More laughter.

‘Like you’d know,’ I managed weakly.

‘No!’ Vladimir cried. ‘This is not right!’

‘We have an alternative opinion?’ Mudge asked.

‘The pork, that is only when human flesh is cooked. This I have tasted.’

‘You are a sick motherfucker, Vladimir,’ Ash pointed out. Vladimir was nodding drunkenly.

I wasn’t sure I liked where this was going. Cannibalism was reasonably prevalent in some of the worst parts of the poorest cities in western Europe. We’d all heard of it when we were growing up, just people too poor and desperate to find anything else. It had also happened during the war. Vladimir seemed to think it was something cool, but then again Russia’s criminal empire was not nearly as poor as most of western Europe and America, though it was not as wealthy as the equatorial states.

‘Everyone has done this in Russia,’ Vladimir said. He was trying to clear his head to make his point by shaking it. It made him look like a large and grotesque mechanical dog.

‘What did you eat?’ Brownie, our normally near-silent medic, asked .

‘A finger.’

Brownie seemed to be considering this. A frowning Vladimir was watching our Scouse medic carefully. ‘You are such a pussy,’ Brownie finally said.

The Vucari looked between each other and at their commander. I think Kost was holding his breath. Now Brownie chooses to speak? I wondered. We all tensed up wondering if he had gone too far. Vladimir looked furious as he pointed at Brownie’s expressionless face and then burst out laughing.

‘You are not afraid of anything, my funny little friend!’

Brownie smiled and started laughing as well.

‘Nice deadpan delivery, you wanker,’ Shaz told the Scouser.

‘This is why They are not worthy enemies,’ one of the Russians said. He had an Asian look to him. The others had called him Bataar and I was pretty sure he was their signalman, their hacker.

‘Worthy enough for me,’ a pained-looking Gregor said.

‘Because you can’t eat them?’ Bibs asked. Vladimir was nodding. I was starting to think Bibs was taking an unhealthy interest in this.

‘No, well maybe for Vlad and some of the others, but we cannot feed our gods and honour their death without blood,’ Bataar continued .

‘That black shit won’t do you?’ Ash asked.

‘The black shit, as you call it, will not do. Mother Wolf was nurtured on blood. She gives us much bounty, lets us hunt as we please. It is only right we offer something back in return.’

Listening to Bataar it occurred to me how lucky we were with Shaz as our signalman. I watched many of the Spetsnaz nodding at what Bataar said. Vladimir may have been the leader but Bataar was clearly the high priest. Shaz was devout but he wasn’t mad. I’d heard lots of stories from other special forces units of extreme and often bloody religious views and in some instances, as seemed to be the case here, of entire squads becoming religious cults.

On the other hand these guys revelled in the war. It was a point of view I couldn’t get behind, but it was also the reason we were alive. I tried to imagine what would have happened if the positions had been reversed. Would we have come in to help? I didn’t like the answers I was coming up with. We certainly wouldn’t if we’d been out of ammo.

‘It’s fear,’ the more sober Kost told us, returning to the initial point. ‘Working for the Organizatsiya there are so many dangerous people. There has to be something about you that will keep others in line. The longer this goes on the more outrageous that has to be.’

I wasn’t sure I would have been so frank with a man like Vladimir. The Spetsnaz lieutenant seemed to be giving Kost’s explanation some thought.

‘No,’ he said.

Kost raised an eyebrow. ‘No?’

‘No. Or that is not all. Fear is important.’ He held his arms out expansively. ‘We are predators! We hunt and kill! I want to chase a man down, a man who has wronged me or mine!’ His shouting was drawing looks from others in the mess as well as the occasional cry to shut up. All the Wild Boys were looking around a little nervously, making placatory gestures towards the people we knew. ‘I will chase him down! I will make him fear me! Make his heart beat faster so when I sink my teeth into his neck the blood will surge into my mouth again and again with the last beats of his heart, and I will taste his fear and know what I have done to him! How I have changed him!’ By the time he was finished he was standing on the table with many of the mess’s other patrons shouting at him to be quiet.

Vladimir bit his tongue and spat blood into his glass of vodka. All the Vucari did the same. Kost was shaking his head.

‘Na zdorovye!’ Vladimir shouted and downed his drink.

‘It means “For health”,’ Mudge told me, leaning over. For some reason I found this very funny.

The Vucari downed their drinks. Then as one they all threw their glasses against the wall. The other special forces types in the bar did not appreciate glasses exploding close to their heads. I don’t know why. It wasn’t as if it was going to hurt any of us. We were on our feet trying to apologise. It was a night of firsts for me. I had not been expecting what looked like a company of military police to make their way through the mess towards us. Everyone was so surprised that it momentarily defused the situation. It got very quiet in the mess.

‘Oh you’ve timed this well,’ Gregor commented dryly.

‘Extensive suicide bid?’ I asked.

The head of the company of MPs was clearly part of their Cyber-SWAT unit. He at least had the courtesy to look very nervous. Most of his men and women looked like they were shitting themselves.

‘Sergeant Douglas?’ he asked. Shit! I racked my brain trying to think of what I’d done. How much alcohol had we stolen? A text message started blinking in my IVD: ‘You have orders to accompany me to the field hospital to hand over your arm.’

That made sense. Presumably the officer who it was meant for wanted it. Must have a lot of pull and no patience to arrange this.

‘Yeah, I can’t see that happening,’ Gregor said, moving next to me. Ash, Bibs, Brownie and Shaz did the same. ‘Mudge, get up,’ Gregor told him.

‘Can I not show support from a comfortable reclining position?’ Mudge asked. Gregor glared at him. Mudge got up.

‘You sicken me!’ Vladimir roared from where he was standing on the table. ‘He is a fighting man! A good man! He lost his arm well, and you come here to do this to him! I will feast on your flesh and crack your bones to sup the marrow!’ I felt he was going a little over the top. All the cyber-dogs were up on their feet and looked as if they were growling despite not making any noise. The MP commander looked like he wanted to cry. I could see Vladimir crouching as if he was readying himself to pounce.

Just before it started I saw Vicar staring at me from the bar. Vladimir pounced. There was a massive fight.

I awoke confused as to where I was. Then I remembered as I looked around the bloodstained bed. My wounds were healing, the small ones mostly gone. The more serious ones would take longer. I should probably get the spine checked out.

What was going on? Had Vicar been on Sirius? I hadn’t known him then. I hadn’t met him until I was on the Santa Maria. But then when I met him he hadn’t been wearing his dog collar; he’d been in fatigues. There was always a chance he’d been there that night. Operation Spiral had taken place in the Sirius system but rumours pointed to it being run from an NSA-controlled frigate in orbit, not on the ground. Why had I seen him there?

I got up and headed back to the room that Kenny had first shown me to when we’d arrived. I wondered briefly where Fiona had gone but found that I couldn’t care less.

The whisky headache that I once again so sorely deserved was significantly augmented by being hit on the head with a spiked ball that I had deserved less. I’d had enough of these fucking crazy people and I was leaving. I just needed to get my stuff and then I was heading back to my campsite. I’d sort the rest of my wounds out when I got there.

This was tainted for me now. The beauty of the landscape couldn’t outweigh the sickness of the people living in it. Maybe that included myself. I couldn’t stay here and I didn’t think that they would leave me in peace if I wasn’t going to play their game. I needed to talk to God.