Crashing Heaven (23 page)

[ We’ll see. Not too long. Want to watch?]

The room shimmered around Jack. The servers became patterns of figures representing buried worlds of data. Some were static, others flickered in constant motion. Jack remembered his accountancy days. He’d spent weeks drifting through accounts, carving clear and final financial snapshots from confusing, tangled corporate structures. [ Takes me back,] he said. He stretched a hand out to touch a nearby server.

[ Whoah!] yelled Fist. [ You don’t go near them. You’ll set off alarms all over the place.]

Jack pulled his hand back, embarrassed. As an auditor, his presence had always been legitimate. Once signed into corporate databanks he’d never had to worry about triggering security.

[Drop me out, Fist. I’ll keep watch.] The white room reasserted itself.

Fist was still at the same server. [Getting stuck in, Jack!] he said, then stepped into it as if he were walking through an open door. [Digging around,] he continued. His voice sounded muffled. [ Interesting!]

[ What’s their security like?]

[ Hardly there, compared to Totality ice.]

[ You’re not missing anything?]

[ Jack, please. I know what I’m doing.]

[ You missed something important in reception.]

[And was that a problem? Besides, this is much more interesting than hacking a diary. Right, got to concentrate.]

[Don’t screw up.]

There was no reply. Jack sat down on the floor, leant back against the wall, and waited.

[Aha!] said Fist, after a while. He sounded far away. [ I’m in! Even easier than I thought it would be.] There was a pause.

[ What can you see?] asked Jack.

[ Files.] Fist’s voice echoed lightly, as if he was standing in a vast, empty space. [Lots of files.]

[Get digging.]

[ I’m firing up some of your old Greyware. The corporate analysis stuff.] Jack felt another tug in his mind. Semi-archived systems unpacked themselves and groaned into life.

[Seven years old, verrrry old school! Want me to pull down the updates?]

Jack was getting nervous. [ We don’t have time for that. Just get stuck in. Look for Pantheon traces, anything flagged Yamata …]

[A-OK.]

Fist’s voice was coming from even further away. He was deep in TrueShield’s virtual self. Jack felt a moment’s dizziness as the Greyware drew resource from his consciousness. In the distance, Fist started singing.

[ Take this seriously,] hissed Jack.

[ It helps me concentrate,] said Fist dismissively. [Digging hard. Oo, what’s that? It’s hiding from me.]

[ You’ve found something? Already?]

[ I’m not sure. I’m just coaxing it out.] A moment’s silence. [ Now I can see it! What the fuck? It can’t be.]

[Don’t get distracted.] Fist didn’t reply. [ Fist?] Little grunts reached Jack. Fist seemed to be working hard at something. Something rustled. Jack thought of the unreal leaves of Violin Gardens.

[ It goes up and up and up …]

Fist’s voice was coming from somewhere above Jack.

[ Be careful. It could be dangerous.]

[ …all the way past the moon.]

[Show me!]

The ceiling lights flickered out of existence. Jack was looking up into a dark sky. There was a pale, buttery moon and a scattering of stars. A beanstalk reached up towards them, shimmering with golden light. Fist was pulling himself up it, hand over hand.

[More branding,] Fist explained. [ You should have spared yourself.]

[ What are you climbing?] asked Jack.

[A Pantheon hardlink,] Fist replied proudly. [Straight to whoever’s behind Yamata.]

[Come down, now. Deep security!]

[ Nothing I can’t deal with,] breezed Fist. [ Besides, what better way of finding out which giant we’ve got to kill than climbing up their beanstalk?]

Something sparked into life higher up the rope and leapt down towards him. Fist waved a hand. It vanished in a shower of sparks. [ Your corporate engagement and my penetration systems mesh rather well.] More security bots leapt towards him. [ I see them, I know them, I break them. We’ll find out who’s up there in no time.]

[Come down,] yelled Jack. [ NOW!]

[ Really,] Fist shouted back, [you should have more faith.] Another explosion of sparks shivered down from above. [ I wish we’d fired up your Greyware years ago! Who’d have thought that accountancy could be so much fun?]

[Gods!] Jack reached out to pull Fist back in, but as he did so there was a surprised little squeak. Fist disappeared.

[ Where are you?]

[Still here!] The puppet’s voice sounded impossibly distant. [Only I’m not quite sure where here is. Some sort of gateway. Corporate security, cracking it now.]

[ Fuck’s sake.]

Jack tugged at Fist, but nothing happened.

[ I can’t get you back.]

[ Hmm, must have been a one-way portal.] Fist tittered. [ How silly of me to step through it just before you tried to reel me in.] Jack groped for swearwords. Before he could shout anything, he felt another pull on his mind. [Oo, some tricky stuff. Going to need more resource, Jack. Ready for a little sleep?]

[ It’s not safe.]

[ There’s no other way out. And besides, pretty much everyone’s gone home, and I’ve nudged TrueShield’s sign-in systems to make it look like we’ve left too. We’ll be fine.]

[ I’ll have to take your word for that,] grumbled Jack. Darkness flooded his mind. He quickly slipped into the familiar dream state. Faces from his past flashed in front of him – his parents, Harry, David Tiamat, Andrea. Andrea’s music danced behind them all, shaping memory into coherent narrative. Soon, even that faded as Fist drew on yet more of his mind. Jack fell into a deeper, quieter sleep.

When he woke up, he was somewhere new. Fist was shaking his shoulder. ‘Look, Jack. Just look!’ At first, the bright light dazzled him. He sat up, rubbing his eyes. Machinery roared, assaulting his ears. ‘Look around you! I had to show you, I rebalanced my systems a bit to bring you in.’ Fist’s voice was bursting with excitement.

‘You opened the gate? How long did it take?’

‘A few hours. Took everything I’ve got. Still easier than Totalityware, though. But that doesn’t matter. Look!’

‘Where are we?’

‘Somewhere you’ll never, ever fucking believe.’

Chapter 33

Jack’s eyes adjusted to the light. He stood up. They were standing on a small platform, next to some oil barrels and a small pile of welding gear. The platform was set in the side wall of a great, cruciform space. It was the same shape as East’s cathedral, but a very different kind of building. Instead of stone, it was built entirely of iron. Jagged pilasters ran up vast rusting wall plates past weld-seams the size of train tracks. On the ceiling, rusting tracery had metastasized into endless, snarled-up metal knots. Rather than a mirrored lake of mercury, the floor was solid concrete, spattered across with vast dark patches where oil had soaked in. The cathedral was empty, but the sound of heavy machinery clanked and groaned through it. About three quarters of its nave was in darkness.

‘Gods,’ whispered Jack. ‘We’re inside one of the Pantheon. That’s impossible. Who is it?’

‘It’s Kingdom,’ replied Fist. ‘I’ve checked the code.’

‘Shit. You’re sure?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And you broke into him. No wonder he wants to get his hands on you. Imagine if he could do that to the rest of the Pantheon.’ Jack sat down on one of the oil barrels. It creaked beneath him. ‘He was behind it all. Smuggling sweat to screw even more work out of his people, and fuck the consequences. Fucking bastard.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Fist triumphantly. ‘He’s that all right.’ Fire sparked up around his hands. ‘And now you need to let me kill him.’

‘No,’ replied Jack. ‘We can’t do that. We need to get out of here, right now.’

‘What? Kingdom’s spent the last seven years fucking you, and he’s about to start fucking me too. We’re right inside him, he doesn’t know we’re here and he won’t until it’s too late. We can turn him into a smoking ruin. Take no prisoners, Jackie boy! It’s the only way to be sure.’

‘Oh, you’re right about that. We have to bring him down. But we can’t do it like this. We can’t just burn him out and leave a void. That’s no victory.’

‘Why not? That’s what we do. It’s what we’ve always done. Think how we toasted all those Totality fucks. That’s kids’ stuff next to this, but the principle’s the same.’

‘We stopped doing that.’

‘You stopped. Because you didn’t believe in the Soft War. But you believe in this.’

‘And I believe in all the people who rely on Kingdom. What would happen to them if we suddenly broke him? Who would run all his infrastructure then? It would all crash – chainships, manufactories, satellites, joy platforms, asteroid bases. Everything that the Totality haven’t taken yet, from Mercury to here and then out to Mars – broken.’

‘So, who cares?’

‘Tens of thousands dead. And even if it wasn’t for that – can you imagine how the Pantheon would react, if you killed one of their own? Can you imagine how they’d punish us? And we don’t even have any evidence. How would we ever convince anyone why we’d done it?’

‘Oh bloody hell!’ Fist turned away from Jack. He balled his little hands up and beat them against the railings. ‘Bloody, bloody, bloody hell! It’s so unfair. I could have been someone, Jack. I could have been the puppet who killed a god.’

‘You still can be,’ Jack reassured him, gently but firmly. ‘Just be patient. We go back down to the TrueShield servers, we dig through them and we find proof. Then we take it to Lestak and Ifor, and we let them sort out Kingdom and Yamata for us.’

‘Boring,’ spat Fist. ‘I think I’ll just kill him anyway.’ He kicked the welding gear. A pair of goggles and a blowtorch flew towards the railings. ‘Fuck!’ he gasped, rushing to catch them but just missing. Jack leapt forward and grabbed him, stopping him from going over too. A great clatter rose up from below. It was far noisier than it should have been, noisier even than the machine sounds. Then it died away to complete silence.

‘Not good,’ said Jack. ‘Crash us out.’

‘But he’ll see us! He’ll know we’ve been in here!’

The air was dense with strange, charged expectation. A soft gust of wind touched Jack’s face, promising something far harder. ‘He knows already. He’s isolating us.’

Fist closed his eyes. ‘Dammit, you’re right. He’s draining power from local systems. Full manifestation imminent. No time to reconfigure for combat.’

The cathedral vanished, and Jack was back in the server room. [ Fist?] A few seconds, and the puppet popped into existence. [Let’s go,] Jack snapped.

The door leapt open in front of them and they were running down the corridor to the atrium. There were no trees this time. When they were halfway across it, the Sprite reappeared, man-sized, smiling out of a mouth made from cracked bones. Its nails were hard and black and wickedly sharp. Its wings were made from human spines and flayed skin.

[ YOU STEPPED OFF THE PATH
,] it howled, its metal grinder voice too loud to be anything other than a simulation,
[AND NOW YOU’RE LOST.]

[ FUCK, JACK, IT’S INSIDE
ME!]
screamed Fist.

[ What? How?] said Jack.

[ NEEDED EXTRA RESOURCE
TO GET INTO KINGDOM. SHUT DOWN ALL SHIELDS. NOT BACK
UP YET!]

[Shit.]

The Sprite leapt towards them. It shattered into a great burning shape, stretching itself out into shimmering patterns of light. Fist swore, Jack yelled orders. The patterns resolved, becoming a floating entity carved from brilliance. Its body was a lopsidedly incandescent sac. Tentacles hung down from it, waving lazily backwards and forwards as if stroked by invisible currents. It looked like a vast jellyfish, dreaming in a tropical ocean.

[ Hello,] said a voice that Jack knew well. [At last I get to play with you. You won’t find me as easy as Akhmatov.]

[ Yamata,] Jack said, shocked. [On our private channel! Where’s she coming from?]

She laughed and the assault began.

‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ yelled Fist, not bothering to mask his voice. His defences had been fully compromised. The puppet’s first task was to determine how deeply he’d been penetrated. A thousand security objects leapt into being within him, deleting invader bots as fast as they could.

‘They’re trying to crash my weapon systems.’

Pain shimmered inside Jack as Fist drew on deep resources. He staggered, then shouted: ‘Careful! Don’t knock me out!’

The puppet had seconds to rebuild his defences, understand their opponent and start fighting back. Yamata’s voice boomed out, rich with confident amusement.

‘No mercy this time, Jack! You’re too much of a threat. You’ve finally realised what Fist can do, so Kingdom’s let me take the gloves off.’

The light intensified, punching agony into Jack’s mind. He collapsed to his knees.

‘Now for something a little more physical,’ said Yamata calmly.

A bullet cracked past.

‘
SHIT!!!!
’ howled Fist. Suddenly there was a panther by Jack. He shook at the sight of it. Then it was springing to the right of the shining virtual entity before them. Yamata half-laughed, half-screamed.

[Got privacy again,] gasped Fist. Crystal had grown around his lower legs. The puppet tottered forwards, then stopped as the two crystal masses joined and became one. He was immobilised. [ Totality attack package.] There was no emotion in his voice. Fear pricked Jack. The situation must be very serious for Fist to dump his personality subroutines.

[ I’ll take the digital structures,] Fist’s new, toneless voice said. [Get the woman with the gun. This panther won’t be there for long. Can’t boot up the others.]

The crystals were still growing. They’d insinuated themselves into his joints. Foot had separated from lower leg, lower leg from upper leg, upper leg from hip, each now a separate shape floating in crystal.

[ I need to focus. Dropping the cat. Get the woman.]

Jack forced himself to follow the panther. Its growling vanished. Light flashed behind him and white noise roared. Fist was fighting back. There was a black shape ahead, a woman lying on the floor. Jack threw himself at her, piling a knee into her stomach as he landed. She grunted and he saw her face and Corazon’s memories inside him screamed, for this was the woman that had killed her.

‘Yamata!’

A punch snapped his head sideways and then she’d flipped him over. He gasped, partially with pain, partially with shock. [ Fist!] he yelled.

[ I’m busy. Yamata’s attacking,] said Fist.

[Me too.]

[ What? Both of us?]

A status update flashed into Jack’s mind. Fist was three quarters encased in crystal, one arm trapped, one flailing. His legs were completely separated from his body. Crackling blue fire danced out of him, charring each exit point, and exploded through the crystal as his defence systems tried to break its hold.

[ Harry was right,] said Jack.

[ That cunt. We’re not finished yet.]

Pain gripped Jack’s throat. Yamata was throttling him. He thrashed at her arms, but her grip was too strong. He tried and failed to kick her. His neck shouted agony.

[ Fuck’s sake Jack, go East on her!]

Jack dropped inside himself, pushing the Eastware to full. A flood of digitally enhanced charisma flashed through him. He remembered the effect he’d had on the InSec men, wondered briefly how Yamata would respond, then smiled, a Narcissus turning his beauty on another.

Yamata reacted, but not as Jack had expected. She leant back, for a moment taking the pressure off his neck, and laughed.

Fear flashed through him as the Eastware frantically fine-tuned itself, looking for a way to affect his adversary. He failed again to punch her. She shifted her weight, moving her hands to his shoulders, pinning his arms down. Her face came right down to his.

‘I’m beyond that sort of thing now,’ she said, and slapped him. Her hand hit with the density of lead. ‘Kingdom’s afraid of you. I wondered if I needed to be too.’

Fist screamed in the background.

‘But look at you now,’ she continued. ‘A broken puppet, and a man whose makeup does his fighting for him.’

She drew right back, arching away from Jack. He turned his face away just in time, so when she drove her head down at him the attack glanced off his cheek. Fist screamed again, but this time the sound was muffled. Jack imagined the crystal choking his mouth.

[ Fist!]

[She’s attacking my higher functions. Trying to wipe me.]

‘You don’t even know what I am, do you?’ said the woman. ‘Or what I’ve been up to. Not a clue.’ She clamped her hand over his mouth and nose. ‘Meat’s too easy to beat. Your puppet too. We planned to wait till you were dead and do a deal with him. Too late for that now. Going to burn him out and hope we can salvage his weapon systems.’

Jack swore, his voice as muffled as Fist’s.

‘Fucking sweat-dealing
BITCH!
’

‘You think Kingdom cares about sweat?’ she said, and laughed again. She lifted her hand off his mouth and snatched a breath. ‘You really do? After all this time? Oh, Jack, bless you, you sweet, innocent thing. Your puppet can kill gods, but you still don’t understand them.’ There was a tinkling sound, as of breaking glass. Fist had freed his mouth.

[ Fuck it. I’m summoning Harry. With luck, she’ll kill him too.]

[ You don’t have to.]

[ I’m almost beaten. Weapon systems all down. Hardly any shields. He’ll be a distraction. You might get out. And he’ll be far too busy to hack me, so …]

Fist’s voice cut off suddenly. Jack imagined crystal growing back into his mouth. There was a white noise blast, then silence. An alert flashed in his mind. Fist’s last firewalls were dying.

‘Little Fist all burnt out,’ Yamata chanted, pressing a hand down hard on Jack’s face. ‘And no Grey to save Jack the wannabe giant killer. You know,’ she continued conversationally, as he choked beneath her, ‘I’m enjoying this. I was so angry that Grey protected you all those years ago, but now I’m almost grateful.’

Jack’s consciousness began to slip away. He reached out for Fist. There was nothing coherent there to touch, only a mess of emergency defence and repair systems blinking rage and confusion. He imagined a small wooden mind, about to be torn apart; refused to consider the digital carnage that such dissolution represented. Now that he too was falling into unconsciousness, a strange and gentle calm had descended on him.

His principal emotion was a distant sadness that Fist would not after all inherit his flesh, that soon nothing would remain of either them. There was deep frustration, too. Yamata had named Kingdom as her patron, but dismissed sweat as his motivation. Even now, it seemed that Jack didn’t understand the true nature of his adversary. The problem of his exile remained unresolved.

Words drifted into his mind: ‘You really were too easy …’ He prepared to let everything drift away. But then a voice he recognised pulled him back.

‘He may be easy,’ said Harry grimly. ‘But I’m not.’

There was a gasp and the pressure lifted off his mouth, then his body. He had just enough in him to turn and see that there, in the centre of the room, larger than life, stood Harry. He was maybe seven or eight foot tall. Blue fire danced round him in barbed, jagged flashes. The flames that had burnt Fist didn’t seem to touch him. His voice was a roar, thick with Docklands rage.

‘You killed me, you ungrateful bitch, and now I’ve come to break you.’

The barbs of blue fire exploded off him, and all hell broke loose.

Yamata rolled off Jack, snatching up her gun as she did so. A popping sound followed her – bullets leaping into the air. Harry ignored them. She screamed as blue exploded around her. The scream ended suddenly as her body lost all focused motion, and she was a falling clutter of limbs tumbling limp on to the floor.

‘Well, that was nice and easy,’ gloated Harry. ‘Now for the rest of you.’ He turned and advanced on the floating creature that had broken Fist. Fire lashed out again, dancing through its tentacles and setting them writhing in agony.

Jack stood up. He tried to pull Fist back into his mind, but there was nothing there. He’d have to reclaim him manually. He moved back to where he’d seen him last.

‘You wanker,’ Yamata’s voice yelled. ‘I’ll just kill you again.’