Gavin Smith - War in Heaven

‘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.