War in Heaven

by Gavin G. Smith

  Except it was all a lie. Jakob was dead.

  I had to control myself.

  ‘Rolleston?’ I heard myself say. I had to get the shakiness out of my voice. He turned to look at me.

  ‘You won’t be so lucky. I’ll take my time with the rest of you,’ he said.

  There comes a point when threats become superfluous. He wasn’t the first man who thought he’d had power over me.

  With a thought I sent the package. All over Rolleston’s recently exorcised fleet, Mudge’s smiling features appeared on IVDs on comms monitors. As tersely and as honestly as possible, Mudge explained to them what had been happening. What had been done to them. His words were supported by the evidence of the monstrosities that the Bush and the Black Squadron frigates had become.

  ‘You’ve lost,’ I told him.

  I think he was unsure for a moment, just a moment, then his features became cruel and confident again. Arrogance – his, mostly – had been the cornerstone of the plan. But arrogance is pretence.

  ‘How do you work that out? Even now I am transforming the Earth. I control the net.’

  I shook my head. ‘Check your net feed.’

  Pagan walked across the plain of glass, his staff tapping against its surface. Lightning arced all around him. Anyone or anything which got too close became cinders floating in the virtual air. He glowed blue and white from the inside. He was like a beacon under the burning red sea of the sky. I had to show no reaction as Papa Neon approached what he thought was one of his old friends and was burned to nothing. I felt a strange sense of satisfaction when lightning reached out and destroyed Nuada, because the gods had to know as well. Lessons were being taught. Pagan was God now and God was pissed off. The angels and the other hackers parted for Pagan. He looked magnificent. This was to have been how I died. It would have been a good death, but despite what Jakob said I had wanted to live, but I had wanted all of me to live and he tore part of that away without even asking. No, it wasn’t Jakob who had done that.

  ‘So?’ Rolleston demanded. ‘He is no match for Demiurge.’ I thought I could detect apprehension in his voice.

  The Grey Lady was back on her feet again. She seemed to have recovered and was moving back to her father’s side.

  ‘That’s the thing though. It’s not one Demiurge, is it? It’s four. Each Demiurge in each system has developed separately. What did you program them for?’

  On the plain Pagan/God stood in front of the four black suns and raised his arms high, lifting his staff. Lightning arced out and struck all four of the suns. I heard the Demiurges scream but Pagan/God was just getting their attention.

  It was written all over Rolleston’s face. He understood. His arm transformed into a weapon and with a scream of rage he turned and fired at Pagan, whose already burned corpse disappeared in a blast of plasma. The floor of the ship bucked and moved as the plasma turned its biomechanical flesh molten. I felt the heat against my skin and turned away from it.

  ‘You didn’t get him, Rolleston. He has already gone far beyond your power.’

  Pagan/God still stood before the black suns. But then I saw Pagan start to panic. I was pretty sure that gods didn’t panic. Tendrils of black light reached for him from each of the black suns. They wrapped around him, enveloping him, and then tore him apart. I didn’t even flinch. The tendrils withdrew back to the suns.

  Rolleston turned to us, smiling, confident, smug again.

  ‘I made them like me,’ he said in what I’m sure he thought was a sinister manner.

  ‘Frightened?’ I asked.

  His eyes narrowed. He was going to kill us or worse. Might as well try and aggravate him so we can get it over and done with quickly.

  ‘You taught them how to hate, completely, and then you gave them God-like power. Pagan and God became a virus designed to do one thing, remind them of that. They developed separately with separate experiences. They are individuals now. What would you do if there was more than one of you vying for power?’ I asked.

  The first arcs of black light began between the black suns as they attacked each other. I watched Rolleston’s eyes widen. Hate consumed hate in a rage of mutually assured destruction.

  ‘You’re all alone now,’ I told him, but then he always had been, I suspected.

  I watched his features start to change again as the rage spilled out onto his flesh. Good. I don’t fancy spending the rest of my life as some sadist’s plaything again. I hope the hackers are right – I hope there’s another world – and I hope that Jakob and Ambassador are there and maybe the three of us can have a chance at a life free of hatred, pain and madness. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. I closed my eyes. Let’s just get this over and done with.

  ‘What …?’ Rolleston’s voice sounded small, shocked. I opened my eyes. The dagger, the one that Jakob had been carrying, the one that Rolleston had taken from him and thrown away, was sticking out of his chest. Where his heart should be. Rolleston was staring at Bran. Bran was gazing back. Emotionless. Rolleston collapsed to the ground. Crom Dhu, Black Crom, had done its job – killed the bio-nanites that now made up Rolleston’s form.

  The black suns had gone. Then every single computer connected to the net crashed. Dead ships hung in space. Gravity and life support went offline momentarily. Every cyborg, myself included, went blind. Those who needed their systems to live started to die. I was desperately trying to reboot. Pagan/God’s last little trick. I wondered how many thousands of people we’d killed.

  The net rebooted. The plain of glass was gone. The sea of fire had gone. The black suns had gone. Pagan/God had gone having saved us all. Pagan had accomplished what Rolleston had failed to do.

  The Grey Lady was climbing to her feet. Our gravity hadn’t gone off. We weren’t on a technological ship. This was a living creature now. It was wired differently. I remained sitting. My body felt like a big bruise with added cuts, breaks and burns. My nose was broken and my ribs were cracked – at best. I laughed. MacFarlane wouldn’t have wanted me working for him now. Mudge and Rannu turned to look at me.

  Of course there was still the little problem of the Grey Lady and the Black Squadron things surrounding us. As much as I would have liked to beat the shit out of the wee bitch, I knew we didn’t stand a chance. I was willing her to die. She might yet if I got on the net and she stood too close to any automated weapon system, or there were other accidents that could happen to her. Make my man think I was dead and sleep with him, would you?

  ‘What now?’ I asked her, as willing her dead hadn’t seemed to work.

  She was staring at Rolleston’s body. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected – contortions, mutations, something loud and flashy – but he’d just keeled over. He looked really surprised. She looked at me, startled that I’d spoken.

  ‘I’ve ordered the Black Squadrons to stand down. I’ve told them that Rolleston’s dead. We won’t attack unless we are fired on. I think you should go now.’

  ‘We’re taking our dead and we’ll need a shuttle to come and get us,’ I said. She glanced over at the monstrosity Cat had become and nodded.

  I stood up and limped over to her. She ignored me, just staring down at Rolleston.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Because he didn’t know enough to be afraid any more,’ she said. She was wrong: all Rolleston had had was fear.

  ‘That’s not what I mean.’

  She turned to look into my eyes. I’d been told that she never looked anyone in the eyes. Hers were grey. She wasn’t as ugly as I thought she’d be. I thought back to Dundee, when the orbital weapons platform had hit the rigs. She could have killed us then. I suspect she’d had many opportunities to kill us.

  ‘I don’t know. Out of all of them he was just so … human.’

  I looked at her for a while and she held my gaze. I nodded and turned away. Mudge had managed to crawl to Merle and was holding him, trying not to hurt his arms. I hugged Mudge fiercely.

  ‘Ow!’ But he hugged me back.
r />   I could never tell him the truth. I was sure he would kill me if he knew what I’d done. If he knew that Jakob had died in Maw City four months ago, would it make it easier or worse for him?

  ‘Why didn’t the virus kill you when I stabbed you?’ Rannu asked. The Grey Lady didn’t look at him but there was a ghost of a smile on her face.

  ‘There’s no biotech in me; I’m just really good.’

  Rannu’s eyes widened.

  Epilogue

  Scotland

  Only I knew. I knew because I had made contact with Them. Through Ambassador, the soft warm whisper in the back of my head, I had managed to communicate with Them. Rannu, Pagan, Mudge and Jakob had been separated and were being kept under guard. This was in itself a novel concept for Them.

  They were not sure what to do with us. As a race they moved in concert, They were one. There was no common ground for Them to understand the madness of individuality. They barely understood death. When They told me that one of us had malfunctioned They certainly didn’t understand grief. Or at least I thought They didn’t until Ambassador started to sing. It was beautiful. The others had joined in.

  No body could have survived the abuses that Jakob’s had received. Mudge’s chemical cocktail had kept him alive just long enough to do the job. He had finally succumbed to the radiation poisoning he’d fought against for most of his life. On the streets of Fintry growing up, then Them, then the Cabal’s henchmen and finally Gregor, his best friend turned into a monster. It had taken a nasty little Nazi punk to kill him.

  I finally got to see the body. Ambassador had managed to convey my pain to Them. I think they thought I was suffering the way They had when They’d first been attacked by the Cabal. They were trying to fix him. They had dissected him. They knew the metal and plastic components were mostly working and had stripped them out. There had been so much metal and plastic and so little flesh. They had burrowed deep into what remained, tasted his dead flesh, sampled it, figured out how it worked so they could replicate it and grow it around the metal and plastic.

  I threw up and became hysterical. I think I lost it, maybe for a few days, but we were still being kept separate so the others never knew.

  I meant to tell the others. I really did. I meant to ask Them to destroy the copy but I couldn’t. I rationalised it to myself. We’d need him if we were serious about trying to stop Rolleston. In the end I think it was just the fantasy of a lonely girl whose boyfriend had died. Selfish wee bitch.

  I had wanted him. I had needed him. It hadn’t worked out very well. Probably because at some level I knew it wasn’t him.

  I was pretty sure that Pagan suspected. Mudge must’ve known at some level, they were so close. Rannu would never have suspected. For all the deceit in their world, people like that trust each other, they have to.

  I think that Jakob started to suspect after the Citadel.

  I’m sorry, Jakob. You didn’t deserve that.

  Millions had died in the bombardment, then thousands more in the fleet engagement, the battle on the net and as a result of the net crashing.

  Parts of Africa, Europe and the Americas had been hit by the seed pods bearing Crom Cruach, which had started to transform the terrain around it without Rolleston’s sick guidance. Even now people were fighting to control its spread.

  The net was free of Demiurge and God. It was back to the way it had been before. It was as if all our efforts to see the truth told had been for nothing. There were unconfirmed reports of Pagan’s ghost being seen on the net. There were few sightings of the gods of the net and none of them were confirmed. That was good, as I couldn’t think that they’d be very happy with me. Still I couldn’t allow myself to be too frightened to go online.

  A terrified assault shuttle pilot had taken us off the Bush. Bran had ordered the Black Squadron creatures to help us off and carry the dead. Cutting Cat out of the biomechanical spider’s body had been brutal. Rannu had had to help Merle out of the room.

  Of course we hadn’t been party to the negotiations and had no idea what the Grey Lady had said to Akhtar and the other leaders, but she and the Black Squadrons were allowed to take the Bush and the surviving frigates and leave on the proviso that they never returned and never had any contact with humanity again. It seemed risky but I was sure that Bran would keep her word. I think it was a problem the world leaders were glad to see the back of. It was funny to think of one lone woman leading a fleet of monsters who’d sold their humanity.

  More than three quarters of the people possessed who survived the mass exorcism committed suicide. Of the remaining quarter many ended up in mental institutes. After all, possession by Demiurge was little more than viral insanity. I wondered if, after his exposure to Rolleston’s insanity, Jakob would have been okay. I think he would have survived, but it would have haunted and tormented him for the rest of his life.

  At least after the exorcism most of the relevant people had stood down or surrendered their commands. We didn’t find out until afterwards, but there had been a significant fifth column operating on many of the ships that had been under Rolleston’s command, and during the action there had been a number of mutinies. Most of them had been put down by automated systems controlled by Demiurge. In many ways they were the bravest of the people who had stood up to fight. They’d had nearly no chance and still done it.

  Lalande 2 had declared independence. There were some familiar faces in the managing council. The corps had kicked up a fuss. They would have to pay and treat people reasonably. It would bite into their profits. Tough shit. Nobody on Earth had the stomach for any more fighting. Besides, it would be much cheaper for Earth if the colonies had to look after themselves. The Sol system would remain their biggest trading partner. We were always hungry for resources. The other colonies were expected to follow suit.

  Sharcroft was dead. He liked spending time in sense simulations, power fantasies where he was whole, young, physically powerful and worshipped. Where he could hurt people. Pagan had found this out when we’d worked at the Limbo facility. Despite his flaws and jealousy, Pagan had truly been one of the most remarkable hackers of his generation and had stepped up to save us all. Again. He had developed a black assassination program. With God gone, Sharcroft had started empire-building again. Rannu had sneaked into the Limbo facility and introduced the black program into one of Sharcroft’s power fantasies. One of his virtual victims killed him. It was well past his time anyway.

  It was called the Eagle’s Nest and had been decorated in imperial splendour for an empire that had never made it because it had been polluted with fucked-up ideas. Here was another power fantasy: unreal attractive women fawning over some wannabe. It seemed unlikely that women who looked like that had ever existed, and if they had they wouldn’t have acted that way or been interested in a vile little prick like Messer.

  He was surprised when the women disappeared and flowers started to grow out of everything. He had been left naked and alone. Sanctums are supposed to be difficult to find and nearly impossible to violate. He looked frightened because he didn’t understand what was happening. How could this little wanker have killed Jakob? I forced myself to control the anger.

  ‘Hello, Messer,’ I said as I walked out of the wall and into his sanctum as the Maiden of Flowers.

  ‘You …’ he said. My face was the same, but he’d done well to recognise me as the last time he’d seen me I’d been dressed in fascist chic and sporting a suedehead. I walked towards him over a carpet of blossoming flowers.

  ‘Well done,’ I said and smiled brightly.

  I went to sit on the old-fashioned couch-thing next to him. He shrank away from me, practically curling into a foetal position. He seemed ashamed of his nakedness now he wasn’t in control. And violating his sanctum was a pretty raw demonstration of power. That and I had shut down the command for his icon to appear clothed.

  ‘You killed my boyfriend,’ I said sweetly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he stammered.

 
‘No, you’re frightened, and that’s different. You killed him on a whim because you’re a fucked-up little boy full of fear with a head full of bad ideas. I’ve seen how that ends. I should kill you, shouldn’t I? Not out of revenge but because of what you may become, the damage you could do, the pain you could cause.’

  ‘I’ll change—’ he started.

  ‘No, that’s another lie. That’s fear talking again.’

  I waved my hands over his face, it was a bit theatrical but it made his crystalline insect eyes disappear. He had pretty green eyes underneath. Or at least his icon did. He looked more naked and afraid in the way that only men can.

  ‘You have to find a way to live free of fear. Maybe you’ll keep up with this nonsense when you do, but I doubt it. There are a lot of bad things out there, a lot of things that maybe you should be afraid of, but that’s okay because there are people out there who’ll help you, protect you, watch your back, help you help yourself. More to the point, they’ll accept you.

  ‘We’ll find a way to root out the bad things, cast a light on them and show them to everyone, and we’ll see that, like you, they’re not all that scary.’ He looked at me uncomprehending and still frightened. I think he thought he was talking to a mad person. Maybe he was.

  ‘More than anything now we need new and better ideas for all sorts of things, and the ideas you have are old, bad and not even very original. You need to think for yourself.’ He nodded, still not getting it. He flinched away from me when I stroked his face. ‘It’ll be okay,’ I promised him and I meant it.

  I stood up and started towards the wall. I reached up to touch the flowers growing out of the wall but stopped and looked back at him.