Gavin Smith - Veteran

The environment rushed up around me in a pixelated haze, the resolution slowly improving. It wasn’t the high-definition neon animation VR of the net but rather the more naturalistic realism of sense software. I felt familiar boots sink into familiar mud. I was on a plain surrounded by the sawn-off stumps of dead alien trees. I was wearing full battle gear, my Heckler amp; Koch Squad automatic weapon strapped horizontally across my chest.

What the fuck was Vicar playing at? I was back on Dog 4. In the distance the horizon lit up in an artillery duel. Above me the bright lances of light strobed across the azure night sky, as our fleet and Theirs went at it in high orbit. A figure was making its way towards me through the dead forest. I tried magnifying my optics, unsure if it would work under the rules of this environment. It did and I was less than pleased to see Gregor making his way towards me. He was also in full battle gear, the hardened ceramic breastplate with kinetic padding and a suit of reactive inertial armour beneath it. His railgun was slung up on his right side on its gyroscopic mount. The entire right side of his body was a smoking mess, all but gone; he was practically walking on bone. I reached up to touch my face, expecting to find it also burnt but instead found the smooth hard flesh of skin and sub-dermal armour. It was just like Dog 4, just like my dream.

I considered firing a burst into the visage of my old friend, just to see what would happen, but found that I couldn’t quite bring myself to shoot at something that looked so much like him. It approached me and stopped. Its eyes were black pools with stars in them. I waited. Nothing.

‘Do you have to look like that?’ I asked. It looked too much like a failure, a mistake, a betrayal of mine.

‘This is yours,’ it said. It even sounded like Gregor. It seemed like the alien had control of the environment and had chosen it from my subconscious. This was worrying enough. The question was had it been trying to make me feel comfortable and chosen the wrong thing or was it trying to put me off guard, fucking with me?

‘Is there something else we could be?’ it asked, Gregor’s voice flat, no feeling. I nodded and watched it turn. The low, sleek, black, off-centre humanoid shape of a Berserk. Its multiple limbs ending in long powerful claw-like fingers except the one that wore the bulky weapon glove with its splinter gun and other Swiss Army Knife-like weaponry accoutrements. The only difference was that Berserks were matt black; this one seemed to reflect the light, and like Gregor’s eyes its skin seemed to contain the stars. It looked like a portion of space. That reminded me of the Ninja that had taken out the rest of the Wild Boys and infected Gregor.

‘Yeah, that’s better,’ I said. ‘Let’s not forget what we both are.’ It didn’t say anything. ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

‘We are Ambassador. Though you make us look like murder/slaughter.’

‘What do you want?’ I asked, trying to make sense of his words, perhaps it was having to deal with Vicar but I was wishing that I could just have a normal conversation with someone.

‘We need peace,’ it said.

‘Yeah?’ I said sarcastically, and then wondered if it understood sarcasm. ‘Stop attacking us.’

‘We cannot, until you do. You will not listen.’ Suddenly I was moving towards it rapidly. Without seeming to have taken a step, it grew to fill my vision, and I hit it. It felt like I had flown through a thin veil of water and I was screaming as I seemed to fall through space. Quickly I managed to control myself and look around, rolling in apparent free fall as I did. In the distance I could see the blue marble of Earth. I could dimly make out the various orbital stations that formed a defensive ring around it. As a grunt there was no need for my spatial geography to be up to much, but I guessed we were in high orbit.

I spun around but Ambassador, or whatever it was, was nowhere to be seen. Then I saw the burn; it was a pale-blue colour. It was one of Their ships. There was no doubt about that, though it was a configuration I’d never seen before. Roughly conical in shape, it looked like a series of separate, aerodynamic seed pods joined together, attached to a faster-than-light engine unit. It was difficult to make out, because it was set up for stealth, only the bum of the manoeuvring engines giving it away. Space seemed to pulse. I could not make out what was happening but I saw part of the craft seem to crumple, flame from within, briefly and silently blossoming, before being sucked out into the vacuum and disappearing. The craft seemed to fall apart but it was just the engine system being jettisoned explosively. Each of the pods was a separate stealth re-entry Needle. All of them were heading for Earth. Space pulsed again and again, the light from distant stars disappearing and then reappearing almost instantaneously as more and more of the re-entry pods crumpled and silently blew themselves apart.

I had always found the silence of space battles eerie, a view I seemed to share with most of humanity judging by the rousing music and special effects they were enhanced with on news broadcasts. I finally worked out what the pulsing was. I traced it back and made out a stealthed craft, this time of human design but more sophisticated than most I’d seen. It was firing some kind of black laser, presumably similar to Their black light weapons. One after another, the re-entry pods were destroyed.

Earth’s orbital defences probably would not even be able to detect this distant conflict. They did not seem to be fighting back. It looked like all of the pods were being destroyed but suddenly I found myself shooting through space. I did a bit more screaming before I managed to get a grip. I was in near orbit now. Just in time to see a damaged pod make it through the orbital defence cordon apparently undetected, which meant significant stealth tech, and flame flower briefly as it hit the atmosphere. I guessed it must have been read as a meteor or something. This was it; this was the craft I’d found in the park. The pilot was the creature that Vicar had downloaded. I felt disoriented to the point of nausea as I found myself looking at Gregor again on the plain of mud and dead trees.

‘Why won’t you let us talk to you?’ it asked. Did I imagine a tinge of desperation in its voice?

‘Aaagh!’ It took a moment to realise it was me screaming. I was in the church again, very sudden, real shock. I doubled over and retched, a little bit of bile dribbling out onto the floor. Someone had just yanked me out. Vicar was stood behind me, cable in one hand, a heavy-calibre automatic in the other.

‘What the fuck!’ I managed.

‘The red rider is here,’ he said, the mad glint back in his eyes.

‘What?’ I demanded.

‘The people you’re hiding from,’ Morag said. She had changed and was wearing some kind of hard-wearing but threadbare baggy trousers with many utilitarian pockets, a pair of boots which looked a little too big for her and a hoody bearing the logo of a band or music collective or product that I was unfamiliar with. She’d cleaned her make-up off and tied her hair back in a ponytail. She looked more like a young girl and less like a sex crime now.

‘Rolleston?’ I asked. Vicar nodded. I stood up, still feeling somewhat disoriented.

‘Well?’ Vicar asked.

‘It said it wants peace,’ I told him.

‘Lies,’ Vicar said, but even he did not sound sure of himself.

‘No,’ Morag said. She did sound sure of herself.

‘Was that thing set up for infiltration and assassination?’ I asked him. Vicar considered this.

‘Infiltration obviously, assassination I don’t think so, but it could be a psy-op,’ he said, and I knew he was right.