Veteran (64 page)

‘The suits will never—’ Pagan started.

‘Now!’ I screamed. The five of us took off. The jets on our propulsion fins at near full burn, pointing in the direction our navigation systems remembered the cave mouth to be. Time seemed to slow down as we entered the lake of fire. It was beautiful. I barely noticed the heat or the smell of my own flesh cooking. I ignored the warning symbols coming through the interface from the Mamluk. It was like flying into a sun. This I decided would not be a bad way to die.

‘I’m sorry ...’ I wasn’t even sure I’d heard the comms message through the heavy interference, it was so faint, but I could’ve sworn it was Gregor’s voice, and then I was in the cold of space again.

Below us the small tethered asteroid in which we had sheltered was crawling with Them. It looked like someone had stamped on an ants’ nest: every square inch of it was covered with the aliens. The space surrounding the asteroid was full of Them vessels and Their flight-capable organic mechs. According to the diagnostic readings I was getting, the Mamluk was in a bad way. My comms were barely functioning; the Mamluk still had integrity but much of the armour was slag. The joints on my right arm and leg had melted solid and I couldn’t move them. Other than lenses, the majority of my sensors were down as well. I was just lucky the heat shielding on the propulsion fin had held and the jet fuel hadn’t gone up. I put the internal repair systems to work on the comms system. I don’t know why - I was probably about to be erased from existence by black light.

Balor, Mudge, Rannu and Pagan had made it out. All of their mechs looked partially melted where the armour had run and then solidified again. We were lucky they hadn’t just shattered from the sudden temperature change. Mudge and Rannu’s Retributors had melted beyond use. Pagan’s looked usable from where I was, but that meant nothing. Below us the cave mouth was still burning.

‘What the fuck!’ Mudge’s voice came over faint and through heavy interference.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Pagan said.

From the cave mouth a huge, thick, burning tentacle flicked out of the flames. Then another. What had once been Gregor pulled itself out of the cave mouth. He looked similar to before but bigger. I could see all over him the individual forms of Berserks and other Them-forms melding with his flesh. They were being sucked in, forming thicker chitinous plates or other stranger features like screaming mouths - these must have been a reaction to the burning pain from what had once been Gregor’s subconscious. The fact that he was still burning made him look all the more demonic. On the surface of the asteroid They surged towards this monstrosity.

‘No!’ I shouted uselessly. The mass of writhing tentacles on its back shot out, piercing Berserks, and again the chain reaction of biological connection spread through them. Tendrils even shot into the void, piercing Walkers and small spacecraft.

Pagan fired his Retributor at Crom’s demonic form, a long wild burst. I triggered both the missiles on my back. Warning symbols appeared on my internal visual display - both the launch tubes were too heavily damaged.

‘Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!’ I triggered the explosive bolts on the tubes and jetted away from them before the warheads exploded. I saw Rannu doing something similar. Mudge managed to get one away but had to eject the other. We were only taking light fire; most of Them in the area were either connected to Crom or concerned with dealing with him.

I heard Balor screaming over the tac net, but reception was intermittent at best. Mudge’s missile exploded against Crom but it barely seemed to stagger him. Balor dived towards Crom, firing round after round from the mass driver. These did affect him, driving him back, dragging his network of attached Them with him. The mass driver ran dry and Balor switched to the 30-millimetre railgun, firing it on full automatic as he got closer and closer to Crom.

Balor’s Dog Soldier mech impacted into Crom’s central mass, bouncing both of them off the asteroid. Crom didn’t go far as he was tethered by all the Them he was attached to. The Dog Soldier still had a grip on him. Balor re-established contact with the asteroid with one boot. With the other he slammed Crom back down against the asteroid and brought the railgun round to bear at point-blank range.

‘... to the
Spear,
we need immediate fire support on this grid reference, over! Gibby, we need you. Gregor is Crom. We need the area completely sanitised, do you copy?’ My comms system had suddenly come back to life. It was Pagan’s desperate voice I could hear over the tac net.

A whipping tentacle cut Balor’s railgun in two before he could fire. Crom stood up, easily pulling the Dog Soldier off the asteroid and lifting it into space before slamming it back down against the rock. Both of them were being hit by high-powered, black-light beams and heavy-calibre shard rounds. Missiles were flying towards them but the burning Crom’s black-light, anti-missile defence system was still active, and he was growing more and more of the gristly nozzles with every moment.

Pagan, Rannu, Mudge and I were effectively useless. We could do nothing but sit around and take fire until something got through. The only reason we weren’t dead was that They were far more concerned with Crom.

I heard it first. The singing, like I’d heard in my vision. But it was different, more human somehow, and it was coming through our tac net. I saw the new feed. It was coming from Morag’s mech. She was surrounded by pale bioluminescence. She seemed to be hovering in the centre of Maw City. She was broadcasting the singing. All around her were various Them craft up to about light cruiser size and various flight-capable Them. Several of the huge tentacles that we’d seen earlier writhed around her but did not touch her.

Balor’s Dog Soldier mech had Crom by the neck with one hand and was pounding him repeatedly and rapidly with its other huge metal fist. It didn’t seem to be doing much except stopping Crom from taking other action. Over the tac net I could still hear Pagan begging for fire support. God knew how many of Them were now infected by Crom.

Suddenly Crom grabbed the hand that was pounding him, pulled it off at the wrist and stood up, towering over Balor’s Dog Soldier. With a wrench he pulled the Dog Soldier’s hand from around his neck and then broke the joint in that arm. The Dog Soldier’s laser anti-missile defence system was firing point blank into Crom with little effect. With what seemed like agonising slowness Crom grabbed the front of the Dog Soldier’s chest and dug powerful claws into it, piercing and tearing armour plate.

‘Christ,’ I barely heard Mudge whisper over the net. Crom tore off a large piece of foot-thick armour plate, exposing Balor to space. We all watched as Crom pulled Balor’s impossibly still struggling form from the ruptured Dog Soldier. I could see Balor moving within Crom’s grip. Almost involuntarily I zoomed in on him. Balor’s heavy cybernetic conversion enabled him to survive briefly in a vacuum. I saw him reach up for his eyepatch. Terrified and fascinated I had to watch as he lifted the patch.

There was a very bright light. Before the lenses on the Mamluk burnt out, their flash compensators overloaded, I saw Balor as if in X-ray, his flesh transparent, the machine inside silhouetted by the light. All my systems went down briefly, which should not happen in a mech that was EMP-hardened like the Mamluk. My internal visual display went dark. It flickered back into life as replacement lenses slid into place. I had no idea what had just happened, and there was no concussion wave. I was still hovering where I had been. There was a huge crater in the asteroid, as if a chunk had been bitten out of it. Crom was lying next to the crater, the right side of his body gone. Silent, screaming mouths seemed to cover the left side of his body. Balor was of course nowhere to be seen.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Mudge asked over the net. I had never seen a weapon like it. I felt sickened as I saw that Crom was somehow still moving. I watched as tendrils grew from his cauterised and charred left side, pulling Them into the wound, Their flesh melting and melding into his as he re-grew his missing left side. Balor had died for nothing.

I felt numb. We’d done this: we’d handed Them to the Cabal. Pagan was still begging Gibby over the net, his pleading mixed in with prayers and sobbing. Mudge, Rannu, Pagan and I weren’t even taking evasive action now; we just hovered in space, the integrity of our armour slowly being chipped away by small-arms fire.

On the feed from Morag’s Mamluk I could see that one of the huge tentacles had formed its tip into manipulators and grabbed her mech by the back of its neck. I saw her armour jerk and spasm, presumably as the tentacle’s manipulators pierced it, and the singing stopped.

Crom stood up as more and more tentacles shot out into the void. Above the asteroid there was now a net of craft connected to the walking virus.

The drugs had pretty much worn off now, and I realised there was no more I could do. I could feel the sickness now, my body failing and shutting down much like my mech. I reckoned it had only been adrenalin keeping me alive for some minutes now.

I heard strident and abrasive guitar music.

‘Shut the fuck up, Pagan, you’re boring us,’ Gibby drawled over the tac net. Us? The air filled with plasma and heavy laser fire, missile after missile shot overhead and then the
Spear
soared into view, every inch of it under fire from the multitude of Them craft which swarmed around it.

Hit after hit from the
Spear’s
heavy ordnance hit Crom, doing real damage to him, blowing chunks off. Heavy plasma missiles turned the area around him into a sea of fire.

‘You’re coming in too fast!’ I screamed over the tac net. My only reply was laughter from Gibby. I realised it was too heavily damaged to change course.

‘Out of here now!’ I screamed at Rannu, Mudge and Pagan. Mudge grabbed Rannu as the Nepalese’s propulsion fin didn’t seem to be working, and the three of us triggered full burn on our jets, shooting away from the tethered asteroid.

Judging by the force of the explosion, Gibby must have triggered the remaining warheads he had on board. Behind us everything was red as the asteroid was reduced to gravel. The concussion wave slammed into us and mercifully I passed out, though I was pretty sure I’d died.

‘Do you think They’ll believe we came in peace?’ I heard Mudge say through the pain and the nausea. I hoped that Mudge wasn’t in my particular part of the afterlife just yet. I managed to open my eyes. I was still in the prison of my Mamluk. We were floating in space. Rannu’s Mamluk was holding onto mine. A quick diagnostic told me that my mech was just about working and keeping space out. Pagan was still with us as well.

All around us were flight-capable Them, Walkers and other organic mechs, their honeycombed propulsion systems glowing pale blue. The weird thing was They weren’t firing on us. They just seemed to be covering us. It was like They’d taken us prisoner, but They didn’t do that.

I was still receiving feed. Morag was still where she had been, suspended in space, the tentacle gripping the back of her neck. I checked her vital signs. She seemed fine. I mumbled something unintelligible.

‘He’s awake,’ Pagan said.

‘But not making any sense,’ Mudge pointed out.

‘What’s happening to Morag?’ I asked.

‘As far as we can tell, she’s in communication with Them,’ Pagan said. ‘I think they’ve connected to her through her plugs somehow, and the remnants of Ambassador in her ware are enabling her to talk to Them.’ My vision was very blurry and seemed to be fading. The pain was receding somehow as well. Morag was surrounded by light.

I wished I could hear the singing again. I wished I could talk to Morag just once more.

‘How’re we going to get home?’ Pagan wondered. Maybe I could hear the singing.

‘How the hell are we still alive?’ Mudge asked.

‘I don’t think I am,’ I said. I could definitely hear the singing now. Morag looked beautiful in the light. I kicked off towards her with a slow burn from my manoeuvring fin. There was shouting over the tac net but I ignored it. Morag seemed to glow brighter as everything else got darker.

Acknowledgements

Unlike Them,
Veteran
did not come into existence in a vacuum. Many people helped with the creation of this novel. So in hopefully chronological order, thank you to:

Dr Hazel Spence-Young for the first proofread, encouragement and comments and also to Scott Young for his comments and encouragement.

To Jose Moulds for her proofreading and comments.

To Kath Anderton for her proofreading and comments. Particularly for dropping everything to read a last moment rewrite. Much appreciated.

To Dr Phillip (look I’ll spell it your way just this once) Pridham and Julian Booth for reading the script and providing commentary in their own indomitable style.

To my agent Sam Copeland at RCW Ltd. For being the first person in the world of publishing to go: "Hmm, someone might publish this."

To my editor Simon Spanton at Orion for going: "Hmm, we should publish this."

Thanks to the lovely people at Orion: Jo Fletcher, Jon Weir and Gillian Redfearn for help, advice and generally looking after me.