I didn’t know how long I’d hung there, never growing bored or restless, and I don’t know what made me first realise that something was wrong. Maybe it was an old instinct. I looked around as much as my fixed position in the sky would allow. Eventually I found some of the stars were missing then more as the craft came closer. I recognised the configuration if not the actual ship itself. It was a light cruiser, the sort that had been manufactured around eighty to a hundred years ago. Because of the prohibitive cost of spacecraft many were still in service today. Though huge and seemingly ungainly, I’d always thought spaceships strangely graceful. Its manoeuvring thrusters silently and continually corrected the cruiser’s course.
This was a warship, a human one, and I could see what was about to happen. I started screaming at it – somehow I could hear my own voice – but it did no good. The barrage of missiles had so far to fly it was like they were moving in slow motion, their engines burning harshly. The red light of laser batteries stabbed out, joining the cruiser to the beautiful alien spires again and again, scarring and burning wherever they touched. It was the cruiser’s particle-beam weapon pulsing blue and white every time it was charged that did the most damage. I watched spires split and burst and float into space and then the rockets blossomed, covering the alien city in the brief fires of their plasma warheads.
Ice clung to my face from tiny frozen teardrops. I could not understand this. There was no point. It seemed like an attack on something beautiful for the sake of it. The worst of it was that I could still hear them, the same way I had heard their singing, but they weren’t singing any more.
The asteroid seemed to spin in front of me. It took a moment to realise that it was me who was moving. We were on the opposite side of the asteroid. The cruiser was above me now, making minute alterations with its thrusters to hold it in place. From its hold came two heavily armed assault shuttles – again they were older models. The assault shuttles escorted a much larger transport shuttle. I couldn’t remember the designation for the transport shuttle but it was one of those models that was basically an engine and a cockpit with a framework in the middle that could be filled with modular cargo loads. In this case it carried a portable base set up for deep space.
I watched as the assault shuttles landed and a squad of exo-armoured troops disembarked from each, setting up a perimeter for the transport shuttle. The base was tethered and set up. It was a large one but I couldn’t make out what it was for. It wasn’t a mining operation; besides the Belt resources were nowhere near exhausted and much easier to get at. It wasn’t an OP, as they’d destroyed the only other thing on the asteroid. It was too small for a garrison and didn’t have enough spacecraft with it, and the cruiser was a much better choice for a base.
I had no reference for time but it seemed to me that the base was set up very quickly, or rather the bare amount of set-up was done and it was abandoned. The transport shuttle and one of the assault shuttles were left there as the final assault shuttle took off. They’d also left all the exo-armoured troops on the asteroid. Then something really weird happened. The assault shuttle did not dock with the cruiser. Instead it set another course away from the asteroid at maximum burn. The cruiser began firing its escape pods on the same trajectory as the assault shuttle.
There was obviously some concern from the troops still on the asteroid. Then they started firing. Whatever they were firing at was behind me. Still floating in space though I was, I managed to swing round. Over the small horizon of the asteroid I saw it come. It looked like an oil slick, as it seemed to surge across the cold rock. It was huge, covering the ground, I could see splashes from where the armoured troops’ railgun rounds impacted, but it still came on, tendrils and pseudopods reaching for the soldiers. I recognised this black liquid – it was what I’d seen beneath the chitin of a thousand berserks. It was the same stuff the Ninja had been made from when it had forced its way into Gregor, violating my friend, and it was the same material that had made up Ambassador. The city was Them.
Tendrils grabbed the armoured soldiers and simply prised open their armour. The soldiers inside the powered armour died when they were exposed to vacuum but the tendrils still pierced their flesh. The semi-solid black liquid surged into the shuttles and then penetrated the base. I found myself able to move, trying to ignore the panicking, dying humans around me as I moved, or was taken, into the base.
Corpses of military cyborgs hung in the air. It looked like they had tendrils of their own blood growing out of them. The base seemed to me to be more of a warehouse. It was full of weapons – everything from a space fighter to a laser pistol, but only one of each. There were surface-to-space missile launchers, self-propelled artillery, a sled, a tank, assault rifles and railguns. The newest of these weapons was about seventy years old.
The liquid seemed to reach out and touch it all, even the dead cyborgs; it was like it was tasting everything. Through the massive torn-open airlock door I could see what looked like a tree branch made of liquid reaching up towards the now inert and drifting cruiser. After all, if they were going to go to war they would need to learn to travel interstellar distances.
My eyes flickered open. I was lying in her lap. She was gently cradling my head. A familiar tendril of black liquid flowed from her mouth and into mine. Her eyes were gone; black liquid pools had replaced them. Suddenly I was choking and I could hear whispers inside me.
I sat bolt upright. There was an uncomfortable yank from the sockets on my neck as our connection was broken. Morag cried out and sat up.
‘What’re you doing?’ she cried. I was almost surprised to find myself in the dusty ruins of the old terraced flat.
‘What am I doing?’ I demanded, pulling the last remaining plug from the biofeedback device. ‘What are you doing?’ I was shouting now. ‘In here!’ I tapped the side of my head. She looked stricken, but I was too angry at my violation, at the revelation that flew in the face of everything I’d always known.
‘But you said-’
I stabbed my finger at her. ‘To share, with you. Not so you could fucking brainwash me! You let him in! You gave him access to my head!’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘You know it doesn’t make any difference?’ I told her.
‘What doesn’t?’ she demanded, getting angry.
‘Whether your pimp is human or alien!’ I shouted. I think I expected her to burst into tears. She didn’t; she just looked cold, distant and very angry.
‘Go away,’ she said through gritted teeth. Straight away I knew I was being an arsehole, straight away I knew I’d woken up afraid, but I tried to ignore that weakness and hold on to my pride and anger. I grabbed my clothes and my gear and went to find a place to dress.
I guess Mudge noticed my face like thunder as I returned to where we’d parked. The cyberbillys were beginning to break camp and head out. Dust filled the air again.
‘Went well then?’ he asked, smirking. He was smirking less when he found himself lying on his arse with his mouth bleeding.
Mudge jumped back to his feet. ‘What the fuck!’ he shouted.
‘Not now,’ I told him, and he had the sense not to push it further. Pagan was stood a little way from us, leaning on his staff, watching me. I couldn’t make out the expression on his face.
Gibby skidded his car to a halt next to me, kicking up dust and causing me to cough. I slapped on another stim and knocked back some more of Papa Neon’s pills with water. Buck pulled up on his low rider.