‘Yeah, that’ll work,’ Mudge said.
‘Worth a try,’ the guy said evenly. Here we go again.
‘Don’t be so fucking naive,’ Reb snapped. ‘People out there want to kill us and you want to start a fight in here?’
‘Yeah, if it gets us out of here,’ my fellow trooper replied.
‘The soldiers of Christ are a danger. We all know too much and we all fight with too much righteous fury. We are like a heavenly host: our burning swords will not become ploughshares,’ Vicar said, before turning to the SEAL signalman who‘d been drawing on his flesh with a shank only hours before. ‘They will have to send a signal to open the gates to the void. We will meet them in heaven with swords in our hand,’ he said, a fanatic’s glint in his eye. The SEAL seemed to give this some thought.
‘They’ll have thought of that. If the worst comes to the worst they can either blow open the doors or just jettison the whole module and let the life support run out.’
‘They’ve shut down the life support!’ someone shouted from the rear of the crowd. That would explain why my internal systems were assisting with breathing and it was suddenly getting very cold in here.
‘The best we can hope for is to delay them for a while,’ the signalman said.
‘We need to get through this airlock,’ Reb said, patting the airlock door for emphasis.
‘The only way through from this side would be to cut it or blow it; the mechanism’s fucked,’ the signalman said. We wasted some time making sure we didn’t have any explosives or cutting torches.
‘From this side?’ Vicar asked.
‘There’s a manual pump to open it on the ship side,’ the signalman said.
‘And I hold the keys of death and Hades,’ Vicar said. ‘One must cross over,’ he said. Everyone was staring at him now.
‘See if you can explain what you mean without pissing everyone else off with this religious bullshit,’ Reb said to him. Instead of answering he reached down the back of his soiled combat trousers and began ferreting around.
‘Have you got your hand up your arse?’ Mudge demanded incredulously.
‘You jealous?’ Reb asked, grinning, and definitely scoring points with me. With a grunt Vicar removed his hand from his combats.
‘You enjoy that?’ Mudge asked. Triumphantly Vicar presented us with a brown fist, which he opened to display a shit-covered piece of technology.
‘What is it?’ Reb asked.
‘It’s a lock burner,’ I said with a sinking feeling. Vicar tried to hand it to me but I recoiled from him. ‘Why the fuck are you giving it to me?’ I demanded, though I knew the answer.
‘He who overcomes will not be hurt at all by the second death,’ Vicar said.
‘Do you always carry a lock burner in your arse?’ Mudge asked.
Suddenly there were a lot of people looking at me expectantly. Thanks for singling me out.’ I said.
‘We’re going to die in vacuum anyway.’ Mudge said.
‘You want to do it?’ I asked.
Fuck no. I’m not a rory tory combat soldier.’ Mudge said. I glared at him.
‘We don t haw much time.’ the SEAL signalman said.
‘Well then, you go and fucking do it.’ I said. I really did not want to and I didn’t understand why I was the one picked out. There were lots of special forces types here. It seemed that because Vicar had presented me with the lock burner everyone had decided I was the one.
‘Because you are the righteous-’ Vicar began. My blades slid out almost of their own volition, it seemed.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ I spat at him. ‘One more religious piece of shit out of you and I swear you’ll meet your God right now.’
He stared into my black lenses. Suddenly there was no madness in those wild eyes. ‘I don’t believe in God,’ he said in careful and even tones. We seemed to spend a long time staring at each other, coming to some kind of unspoken agreement that I’m still not sure I fully understand.
‘Can you hack the external airlock?’ I asked. Vicar nodded. ‘Shit! Fuck!’ I shouted. I was really scared. ‘I’ll still have to fight my way to the other side of that door,’ I said, pointing at the internal airlock that led to the Santa Maria. Nobody said anything. ‘Does anybody even know where the Santa Maria’s external airlock is?’ I said. I saw that there was a text-file icon flashing on my internal visual display; it was from Vicar. I opened it, seeing a schematic for the Santa Maria with the external airlock highlighted. ‘If I manage to get the door open you can’t just kill everyone,’ I said to the pissed-off assembled squaddies around me.
‘If you get that door open just leave the rest to us,’ Reb said. I took one last look around, swore again and made my way towards the external airlock. I heard a soft thump as Vicar fell to the ground as he tranced in again.
I grabbed a fire extinguisher from its bracket on the wall as I strode past it. I saw the door to the external airlock slide open.
Augmented humans can last very briefly in vacuum. I had a small internal oxygen supply, a reinforced superstructure and internal systems that could, to a degree, cope with the bends. It was still the worst thirty seconds of my life. I can’t do it justice: the cold was so cold it burnt. My joints were agony. I used the spray from the fire extinguisher as propulsion. I don’t know how I managed to hold on and clamber up the Santa Maria. At one point I caught a glimpse of the stars. Against the curvature of the hull I seemed to be at an odd angle. For a moment there was peace and beauty. I was pretty sure I’d died.
I have no idea how I got to the airlock or how I managed to work the shit-stained lock burner. They found me sobbing, gasping and laughing hysterically on the floor of the airlock. Months later I’d see the footage at my court martial. I didn’t recognise myself. It was like a devil had been put in flesh that vaguely resembled mine.
My blades found their way into the stomachs of the two MPs. On the footage I watched this monster that looked like me get shot, get shot a lot, as he walked through the Santa Maria, killing everyone he found. I had been shouting one name over and over again. Rolleston. It wasn’t confirmed until the trial that Rolleston had given the order, but somehow I’d known and I’d been looking for him, but he wasn’t on board. It was a grinning blood-covered corpse that opened the internal airlock door to the cargo bay and collapsed.
Back home there were sirens for our welcome. We‘d talked about running but we had nowhere to run. Mudge had convinced us it would be okay. He’d broadcast the story as soon as we’d entered the Sol system. We were arrested when we docked at High Nyota Mlima but by then public opinion was with us and Mudge had arranged a lawyer for me through some media contact.
The riot on the Santa Maria that followed our escape from the hold wasn’t much better than my rampage. We were all dishonourably discharged but no further action was taken. We could’ve been shot for mutiny. We were in the wrong because there was no law or military regulation that said we couldn’t all be ejected into space. There is now. Mudge made sure, despite the Official Secrets Act, that Rolleston was disgraced. Though in the end that just seemed to drive him further into the black spectrum of covert ops.
When I met Vicar again in Dundee he was saner, but the one thing I remember more than any other thing about the trial was him – wild-eyed, drool dripping off his unkempt bushy black beard, screaming at Rolleston. It was the same thing over and over again. ‘I know where you live – where Satan has his throne!’
29
It was the speed of it that got to me. It wasn’t subtle. They weren’t trying to rescue anyone. They just wanted to kill everyone in here. At least I think they did.