Veteran (16 page)

‘What you’re talking about is the world’s biggest computer program designed to defeat Them?’

‘It could have so many other applications, help us in so many other ways.’

‘For example, help us build more advanced weapons?’ I asked.

‘It’s going to be programmed for general benevolence.’

‘Aren’t most religions? How many people died in the FHC?’

‘Two hundred and fifty years since the last religious war.’

‘Still, it’s going to have to be pretty aggressive to find a way to defeat Them,’ I said. This was beginning to smack of the usual religious hypocrisy.

‘We’re less concerned with defeating Them than with stopping the war. Perhaps conflict is not the answer,’ Pagan said. I considered this. In many ways it was a worthy cause as long as it didn’t result in getting our entire race eaten or something. Then I remembered that this was all nonsense.

‘But isn’t that the problem with all you religious types?’ I asked. ‘You want your god to act as a magic wand, make everything all right either now or in the afterlife.’

‘But, don’t you see this god would be real with tangible power?’ said Pagan. I wasn’t sure whether it was fervour or enthusiasm I saw sparkling in his icon’s eye. It was a really sophisticated icon.

‘It’s still abrogating your responsibility to something else to sort out your problems,’ I pointed out.

‘No,’ said Pagan matter-of-factly, slightly deflating me. ‘We’re doing what humans have always done. We’re creating a tool to help deal with the problem at hand.’

‘What problem, a lack of faith or Them?’

‘Whichever.’

‘And if God doesn’t make it all right and kiss it better for you?’

‘Then we, by we I mean humanity, will think of something else, though somebody else may have to do that.’

‘But you want to be the saviours of humanity?’ I asked. Pagan actually stopped at this. If I was reading him properly then it looked like I’d actually hurt his feelings.

‘What are you doing to help?’ he asked, sounding angry for the first time. ‘There is a problem; we may have an answer, we may not.’

‘You may make things worse,’ I pointed out.

‘We may but we don’t think so. You mentioned abrogating responsibility earlier on. Well if not us, then who are you hoping will make things all better for you? The corps? The military? The government?’ Now I was beginning to get angry. This was starting to sound like arrogance.

‘Oh please, save me,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Are you Christ?’ Pagan leaned in towards me. He must’ve triggered a cantrip, a minor program designed to provide special effects for his icon. His hair seemed to catch in a non-existent wind and lightning seemed to play across his features. Heavy-handed it may have been but I was reminded that this man could kill me in here.

‘We are God’s parents, as all humanity have ever been. What are you afraid of?’ he asked. I took an inadvertent step back and would’ve sighed if my icon had been sophisticated enough. What was I scared of?

‘It’s just too big,’ I said. I think that was when I maybe started to believe in it as a possibility, or rather wanted to believe, but I also knew I had to resist the disappointment that followed hope.

‘At some point someone has to do it,’ Pagan leaned back. The storm passing, he seemed back to his more benevolent self.

‘Why us?’ I said before I’d even realised I’d included myself.

‘Nobody else is stepping up, and if we don’t nothing happens.’

‘I’m not a hacker.’

‘Sadly, Jakob, men capable of violence are always useful.’

‘We can’t stay here, you know that. If we do we’ll just destroy everything you have here.’

‘Perhaps, but everything is about to change and you have nothing to lose.’ He had a point. I had nothing else to do.

‘What’s this got to do with the alien?’ A horrific-sounding gravelly voice asked. It sounded like someone was trying to speak and chew glass at the same time. My response was embarrassing. The hardcore special forces veteran jumped. Thus probably disgracing three hundred and fifty years of regimental history. What made it worse was that the mannequin was so primitive there was actually a delay between my urge to jump and the mannequin obeying me.

Pagan was looking past me and smiling. I turned to see who was making that horrible sound. The icon looked as bad as it sounded. It was just about identifiable as human. It had a stooped back, a long face with a long sharp tongue and a mouth of squint and irregular but vicious-looking teeth. There were elements of it that looked like a stereotypical witch icon of the type popular in the net at Halloween, for those who could afford it, but there was something about its deathly pale-blue skin, wiry musculature and nasty-looking claws that gave this icon a much more primal and sinister aspect to it. It wore what looked like a simple, ragged black sackcloth dress tied at the waist with a rope.

‘Have you decided how you want to be addressed?’ Pagan asked.

‘Black Annis,’ the hag said.

‘Well I’m sure Jakob will disapprove because of its religious connotations.’

‘That’s religious?’ I managed, pointing at the grotesque thing in front of me. ‘What kind of religion do you follow?’ Everyone ignored me.

‘No,’ the hag-like figure said. ‘For me, it’s a fairy tale. This is what I almost had to become. It could’ve been the other way around.’ It was then I realised.

‘Morag?’ I asked. The Hag nodded. If she’d had to make herself ugly to become a hacker then her icon would’ve been beautiful. To her this was the payment of a karmic debt.

‘Not the Maiden of the Flowers then?’ Pagan said, sounding both amused and pleased. Annis shook her head, almost shyly, I thought. ‘Religious or not, it has resonance with me. I congratulate you. It is a very sophisticated avatar,’ he said. Annis seemed to beam with pride.

‘The hardware helped a lot,’ came that horrible voice again. The hag was looking around the chamber, its face a picture of grotesque wonder.

‘First time?’ Pagan asked.

‘First time jacked in, first time feeling,’ Morag said.

‘That was quick,’ I said, both impressed and suspicious of Morag’s presence in the net.

‘Clearly there is a degree of natural talent,’ Pagan said. With the arrival of Morag I’d suddenly started to feel weary. I realised that Pagan had been sucking me into his insane plan; now his spell was broken.

‘What about the alien?’ I said, repeating Morag the Hag’s question. ‘You said it was key.’ Pagan was suddenly serious again, speaking to both of us.

‘Along with the information form, Vicar also put the result of the tests he’d run on the alien in the memory cube. What he found was that Their physiology is all integrated; there are no separate organs. The brain runs throughout and is compatible with the rest of Them when they rejoin each other to form one consensual hive mind,’ he said. Again this was something that had been theorised before.

‘Then it’s a biological machine?’ I said somewhat patronisingly, probably more for Morag’s benefit than mine.

‘Yes,’ Pagan said. ‘In the same way humans are, but they do not differentiate between what we would see as technology and themselves.’

‘Bioborgs. So?’ I said. This was actually nothing new.

‘Pagan said they were like a biological liquid equivalent of nanites,’ Morag said. Pagan nodded.

‘That’s right, but the important thing is that Ambassador’s processing power is remarkable, and it seems able to learn as instantaneously as we can manage to measure it.’

‘So?’ I said.

‘So it would be able to manage information on the scale required for Pagan and his friends’ plan,’ Morag said.

‘You heard?’ I asked appalled.

‘I sent her the files of our discussion when she entered the library,’ Pagan said.

‘Jakob, you’ve no idea. The hardware enables me to process and understand so quickly. I know so much; I can learn so quickly,’ she said. Her enthusiasm would’ve been more infectious if I could stop thinking about the metal and plastic that seemed to infect us all these days. I’d had enough of this.

‘Okay great, you’ve got your pet alien. Best of luck. This has nothing to do with us,’ I said, not even thinking. Black Annis turned to look at me. Was that amusement I saw in the black orbs that passed for eyes? ‘Me,’ I said pathetically.

There was the sound of breaking glass as the alien burst through its containment program. Black tendrils exploded out through the roof of Dinas Emrys, through the cracks in the ceiling. I could only see more blackness, which meant we were in an unpopular part of the net, the virtual middle of nowhere. The main body of the alien information form seemed to remain within the circle. I instinctively ducked down but Pagan was already working. Scrolls appeared and disappeared in front of him as streams of translucent blue light issued from his hands forming coronas of energy around Ambassador’s black tendrils but seeming to have very little other effect.

‘Out now!’ Pagan shouted in a commanding voice at odds with his normal gentleness. Not being used to the environment, I began looking for an actual exit before I remembered the escape function. The tendrils began to convulse like a snake swallowing a meal, the convulsions becoming more and more rapid.

‘Yes,’ I heard Morag all but whisper. I turned round to see who she was talking to, as did Pagan, his eyes widening in shock. The Black Annis icon’s face was a picture of strangely grotesque wonder. A thin black tendril shot out from Ambassador and pierced the head of the hag-like icon.

‘No!’ I was vaguely aware of myself shouting as I moved towards her, before I realised that here I had no way to help whatsoever. The Black Annis icon was lying on its arched back, shaking as if it/she was experiencing a powerful seizure. The black tendril had pierced the virtual skull and was also convulsing rapidly.

‘Out! Now!’ Pagan shouted again. Years of military conditioning compelled me to obey. I knew I was becoming part of the problem. I spared one more glance at Black Annis and then felt the disorienting pull of reality.

11

Hull

It seemed to take a long time for the information I was receiving to make any kind of sense. Though it was probably no time at all. The world glowed a flickering red. There was a keening noise, but that was cut off suddenly. I eventually recognised the sound as some kind of old klaxon. Then came the seemingly constant soundtrack of my life, gunfire and the screams that always seemed to accompany gunfire. My guns were in my hands. I was not aware of having drawn them.

Pagan was still sitting on his tatty couch, still in his jacked-in trance, his face a mask of effort and concentration. More worrying was the newly skinhead Morag lying on the couch next to where I’d been sitting, jerking and twitching but on her face a strange look of contentment.

I wanted to help but there was nothing I could do. Morag was jacked over a wireless link, she wasn’t plugged in, and I couldn’t disconnect her. I could feel a strange sense of panic building in me. Later I would think that I didn’t cope well with being responsible for non-combatants. I had to put that aside and focus. Begin processing the information I was receiving.

I could hear a mixture of weapons being fired, everything from pistols and shotguns to old-sounding automatic weapons. These were being answered by the unmistakeable sound of the Vickers advanced combat rifle. A weapon I had intimate knowledge of, as it was standard issue in the British army. I could also hear the sound of 30-millimetre grenades being fired from underslung launchers and then exploding.

Thermographics were almost a waste of time. I saw lots of humans moving quickly, lots of momentary blossoms of gunfire. Then I saw the dragon. There was a streaming arc of flame from a machine in the middle of Westbourne Avenue moving towards us. The arc touched a building and there was a roof top garden on fire. I saw the multi-hued heat signature of a burning human jumping from the roof.

The flames burning colder but still burning as the Humber’s murky waters engulfed him.

I switched to low-light optics and edged over to the window and peeked out. Further up the Avenue I could see a flat-bottomed riverine patrol boat. The green optics flared as the deck-mounted zippo sent another stream of napalm into the terraced houses on the same side of the street as me. I magnified my optics. On the deck I could see soldiers in British uniform. I tried to make out their insignia; failing that I managed to decipher the boat’s serial number. They were a guards unit of course, the Coldstream Guards. Fortunate Sons.

I backed away from the window, glancing over at Morag and Pagan. They were still jacked in but Morag’s seizure seemed to have stopped.

Every single vet hated the Fortunate Sons. Every nation in the world and the colonies had them. In Britain it was all the guards units. The worst thing about it was when you joined the army you got all the death and glory histories beaten into you during indoctrination. Most of the regiments that had become the Fortunate Sons had a proud history. The men and women who had died serving in those regiments would probably be sickened to see what had been done to their legacy.

The Fortunate Sons were the children of the wealthy and influential. Sons and daughters of corporate executives, the independently wealthy, civil servants and other government functionaries as well as their own officers. A convenient self-perpetuating tradition. Obviously the draft had to be seen to be fair, but the good people of the world didn’t want little Timothy or Samantha to be sent to die in a meat grinder under some alien sky, so they bravely took up the task of keeping Earth safe. I’d also heard them described as latter-day praetorians, as most of their duties tended to involve ‘counter-insurgency’ work, like this. In other words shooting civilians that the government considered inconvenient.

Vets had a lot more respect for draft dodgers. Needless to say. Fortunate Sons and proper soldiers didn’t tend to share messes, as that would’ve led to considerable bloodshed. The problem was that the Fortunate Sons still knew what they were doing.

What I couldn’t figure out was how they’d found us so quickly. It was too soon unless the sub captain had sold us out, or McShit had or someone here had. Clearly they were here for us. There are however, worse ways for a veteran to die than fighting Fortunate Sons, and I had every intention of killing a lot of them.