War in Heaven (81 page)

‘It’s like his mind,’ Rannu said.

It took me a few moments to understand what he meant, but then I could see it as well. Rolleston grew up here. This was the environment he’d wanted to live in and nobody had told him no. The family had been rich enough to indulge his whims. I wondered at what point they realised that it was a mistake.

‘He’d trick me in here. Every time he’d say that he would be nice, and I wanted to believe him because he was my brother, and every time he’d hurt me or just terrify me.’

The voice surprised me so much I reached for my laser before I saw the holographic ghost. The ghost had the body of a beautiful young woman in a very old-fashioned dress. A leather mask covered most of her head.

‘It got so Father or the staff punishing him made no difference. I think he enjoyed the attention in some ways. Once when he was twelve, the body of one of our housekeepers was found in the pond in the woods. None of the staff ever tried to punish him again. She’d been dissected. Even Father left him alone after that and I hid. I live in metal now deep in the earth. Where it’s warm and safe.’

If this was the sister then she was well into her eighties. I did not want to think what it would have been like for her growing up at the mercy of Rolleston.

‘He would make his own worlds, mostly form-cracked, sense-porn environments with their content and safety restraints removed. Mother found them. Would you like to see one?’

Another holographic screen opened. It was red, screaming and obscene. I felt sick. I wondered to what extent the atrocities committed by Them were watered-down versions of Rolleston’s fantasy life, taught to Them by the Cabal to keep humanity angry and wanting to fight. This was a world he’d made. Now that he’d had time to think on it, hone it, he wanted to make his world our world.

‘This was what broke Mother,’ the ghost of Charlotte Connington told us. ‘I am terribly sorry. Where are my manners? Could I get you some tea?’

I think I managed to shake my head. Suddenly this house didn’t seem like a museum. It seemed like a beautiful trap, a gateway to hell. Our host couldn’t be sane.

‘Could you turn it off, please?’ Mudge asked in a small voice.

‘He can’t have my children. I have to tell Ash to kill the kids if he wins,’ Rannu said, turning to look at me.

We were supposed to be used to this stuff. We weren’t. I wanted my eyes to have unseen what I’d just witnessed, but they couldn’t. Even after being in the mind of Them, even after talking to the gods in the net, even after seeing Gregor’s final moments, Rolleston was the least human thing I’d ever known.

‘The asylum?’ Mudge managed to ask.

‘He had girlfriends, he had friends. One day he tried to amalgamate them all into one single suffering organism. He was quite the genius with biotechnology. I kept some of the vizzes. Would you like to see.’

‘No!’ Someone shouted. It was me.

I zoomed in on the bookshelves. Books on biotechnology, on insects, on religion and atrocity porn disguised as reference texts. I remembered what it was like in his mind. The purity of it. None of it would have been enough for him. I couldn’t shake the feeling that if he won, if he wrote his fantasy large on the flesh of the Earth and the colonies, it wouldn’t be enough. He’d have to go out after Them. He’d have to go after the gods on the net. He’d have to find more to change and consume. He wouldn’t die. He wanted to write his name in obscenity across the stars. I wondered about all the times I could have killed him if I’d had the balls.

‘He tried again. He made a life from a fused-together organism of male and female before it expired in agony. It’s her you should feel sorry for.’

‘Who?’ I asked. Already knowing the answer.

‘The daughter,’ Charlotte told me softly. ‘Josephine.’

I felt cold and sick, or sicker than I had already been feeling. Everything I knew about the Grey Lady changed.

‘He was born to all this. Why did he need more?’ Rannu asked in a small and very non-Rannu voice.

‘Some people just always want more. Nothing’s ever enough for them,’ Mudge said. In his own way Mudge was like that. Mudge looked pale, withdrawn and sounded a bit shaky.

‘He’s coming to visit soon but I think I’ll be dead. If I leave my corpse for him to play with perhaps he won’t follow me and drag me back.’ I looked at her. She’d said it in the matter-of-fact voice of a child.

‘I need to get out of here,’ Mudge said. He turned and practically ran out of the room. I knew how he felt. I was going to be seeing Rolleston’s red fantasy world every time I closed my eyes for a very long time.

‘I’m sorry. We need to go. Thank you,’ I said haltingly.

She was broken, she must be. I felt so sorry for her, even with all her privileges. Anything I could think of to say sounded inappropriate in my head, not enough.

‘Goodbye, Jakob,’ she said. Rannu and I made for the door. I’d forgotten about the security detail. They looked as pale and shaky as we did. I hadn’t even heard one of them throwing up in the hall.

‘Why’d she keep his room like that?’ Rannu asked as we made our way back to the assault shuttle. I didn’t know. The healthiest reason I could think of was fear.

I walked across the perfect lawn. I felt light. I could breathe without any problem and the air was crisp and fresh. The sun was a ball of pale light and the sky bright blue. I wondered if this was the last time I’d see the Earth.

I would’ve liked to see Scotland again. The nice bits anyway. This would have been enough though – the house, the grounds, the skeletal woodlands – if only my mind hadn’t been polluted by what I’d seen. What I now knew.

Mudge was smoking a cigarette as if his life depended on it as we approached the assault shuttle. I saw a uniformed deliveryman walking away from him across the lawn under the watchful eyes of the security detail. There were a number of boxes laid on the ramp. He was still very pale when we reached him.

‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ he said.

‘You okay?’ I asked. One look from him told me I’d asked a stupid question. If you were all right after that then you were very sick. ‘What’s this?’ I said, pointing at the boxes.

‘Replacements. You guys never think ahead,’ Mudge told us.

Fun and games with orbital manoeuvring. The silent burn of the engines as the assault shuttle jockeyed for position for ship-to-ship docking. A message to Nuiko – something forgotten that we desperately needed, huge pain in the arse, we’re terribly sorry. Rannu went on board to do the dirty work. He’s the sneakiest. He didn’t like it but he agreed with my thinking. Hopefully it won’t be unnecessary.

We burned more time as well as fuel as we climbed. Earth orbit looked like a traffic jam. Everywhere you looked, engines burned as they moved little dots of metal to and fro over our blue planet. The spokes looked like thin bending straws growing out of land and sea.

The fleet was a mess. Many of its ships looked like ancient hulks compared to the modern battle-scarred craft I had been used to seeing in the night above Sirius. Ships of various sizes came and went. There was no discernible formation, but maybe its scale was just too vast for me to be able to make sense of through the images being fed to my IVD from the cockpit.

Below us the civilian populace mostly did not panic because so many of them had been soldiers. Below us our political leaders still fought and jockeyed for position.

HMS
Thunderchilde
quickly filled the window of the feed. It was a vast space-going hunk of armour plate, weapons and sensors powered by huge glowing engines. Smaller manoeuvring thrusters constantly burned to keep it in position. Its vast sails were folded away in thick armoured compartments that ran down most of the ship’s body. It was a technological terror designed to bring to bear more firepower than the humble infantryman could ever understand.

Its newness looked out of place. I didn’t trust its lack of scars and burns. It looked inexperienced. It was unproven. I hoped its crew was not. The
Thunderchilde
’s crew was made up of the pick of the RSAF brought back from colonial fleets for its shake-down runs. Most of the rest of the assembled fleet was crewed by Fortunate Sons, the children of people wealthy enough to buy them out of front-line service in the draft. This made me nauseous. While there was a degree of satisfaction that they finally had to fight like the rest of us, these people were fucking cowards. I just couldn’t see them standing up to what was coming.

Metal on metal rang through the assault shuttle as a docking clamp attached itself. It felt like the shuttle had been restrained. We rose into the shuttle airlock. When the air was pumped in and the pressure equalised the airlock split in two and folded down into one of the
Thunderchilde
’s flight decks.

All around us was organised chaos. They were too busy to even have us escorted. A red line superimposed over our IVDs showed the way to our destination. We made our way past mechanics readying fighters and long-range strike craft for flight.

I saw a recently docked flight of fighters having their cockpits drained of acceleration gel, the gooey pilots unplugging themselves and climbing out. EVA remotes, heavily armed and equipped with extensive countermeasures, were being prepped.

I saw a skin mech, an EVA-converted Bismarck, being armed, readying it to climb out onto the hull of the
Thunderchilde
for added firepower and an eyes-on perspective. I’d always thought that skin mech drivers were suicidal; now I just hoped that they were as desperate as the rest of us.

There were a lot of raised voices, metal clanging on metal, the screaming sound of power tools over PA announcements and the occasional shower of sparks, but no panic. To give the RSAF their credit, everything was brutal efficiency and urgent professionalism. The panic would come later. I had to stop thinking like that. I had things to do. I had to blackmail an old man and put all of this, everything, in jeopardy for one person. Pagan was not going to have his sacrifice. First I needed a doctor.

‘Of course, Sergeant. We’re getting ready for a major fleet action. I have nothing better to do than attach a new toy laser to your fucking shoulder,’ one of the ship’s surgeons told me.

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said. Trying not to smirk at him. Ruperts hated when special forces did that.

‘What are you complaining about?’ Mudge asked. ‘Nobody’s hurt yet. Surely you’ll be busy later on.’

Probably not, I thought. Not that many injuries in fleet actions. Space is unforgiving: it tends to make more dead people.

The surgeon turned to give Mudge the eye. Mudge smiled at him but it was bluster. He was still shook up by what we’d seen on Earth.

While the surgeon was glaring at Mudge, Rannu embraced his British army heritage and stole what we needed from the RSAF.

The surgeon installed the shoulder laser with ill grace. I put in the new claws myself. I had a replacement Mastodon in my shoulder holster, and a new Tyler Optics laser pistol – the bigger, more powerful TO-7 – rode at my hip. They wouldn’t help but their familiar weight made me feel better.

Mudge had bought replacements for the kit that Rannu had lost on Lalande 2 as well. Except the kukri – I don’t think that could be replaced.

Pagan came out of fleet Command and Control to meet us. He looked tired and twitchy. He was on something to keep going. We’d need something soon too. He looked at us suspiciously. Behind him the red glow of a holographic display disappeared from view as the door slid shut. Two solid-looking Rock Apes, soldiers in the RSAF Regiment, flanked the door to C&C.

‘What?’ he asked suspiciously.

‘We need to talk,’ I said.

‘I think you’ve made your feelings perfectly clear,’ he said.

‘Don’t be fucking difficult. I don’t want to talk about feelings. We need somewhere private. Where God can’t see us,’ I told him.

He knew something was up but I think he trusted Rannu enough to believe that we weren’t going to do anything too stupid. Certainly nothing that would jeopardise the operation.

Sharcroft and Akhtar, both of whom were on board, were giving us free run of the ship because they thought that they were going to be able to march us at certain death.

Pagan was sharing an officer’s stateroom with Merle, who was in there, a wire stretched between his plugs and a port in the wall of the cabin. I guessed he was connected to the ship’s internal isolated computer system.

They would have to open all the isolated systems to God if they wanted to stand a chance of winning. I knew that all over the fleet cargo holds were being filled up with mass-produced, networked, solid-state memory. Like every tribe in history, we wanted, needed, our god to be bigger than theirs.

Merle was stripping down and cleaning his fancy gauss sniper rifle. He seemed unsurprised as we entered.

‘Give us the room, will you?’ I asked.

‘I’m a little busy,’ he said.

Nothing was ever easy with Merle. Rannu glanced over at me.

‘Fuck it. Let him stay,’ I said, but I knew Rannu was watching him now and I knew that Merle was suspicious.

Mudge lit up another cigarette. He’d pretty much been chain-smoking since we’d left Buckinghamshire. I don’t think he’d taken anything though. I guessed his consciousness was feeling a little fragile.