I could feel his fingers inside me. That’s okay. Internal organs don’t have nerve endings. I spat out some more blood. My love/hate relationship with the medical diagnostic warning icons on my IVD continued as they told me I’d be dead soon.
‘Major,’ Josephine said, putting a hand on Rolleston’s arm. He looked down at her. She was staring at me.
Something itched at the back of my head, some instinct telling me to concentrate on the net. Odd time I know, but I checked the net feed. Silver fire flowed from weapons, limbs, mouths and other things into the net representations of the ships in Rolleston’s fleet. The silver fire, given to the vagabond army of hackers by the gods in the net, sought out the possessed. It was the same godsware program that had freed Rannu. Many of the possessed would die. They weren’t in as good a physical condition and didn’t have Rannu’s strength of mind. I looked at Rolleston and smiled. He was getting angrier and angrier. He would feel the mass exorcisms — as pain, I hoped.
His feelings at what was happening boiled out onto his malleable flesh, his features warping, flowing and changing, I suspected beyond his control. As I watched his face become part demon and part insect, I realised. This wasn’t just hatred aimed at us, this was fear and self-loathing given fantasy and then form. He hadn’t considered himself human, ever, and hated himself. If he hadn’t had his fingers in my chest I would have pitied him.
I saw Pagan walking across the plain of black glass under a sea of fire towards four black suns. Lightning played all around him as his staff tapped against the glass.
I turned to look at Morag. She was horrified by what was happening to me. I wanted to tell her it would be okay. Maybe I did. I turned back to Rolleston and laughed at him.
‘Father?’ Josephine said with some urgency now, still holding on to his arm.
‘Look what you’ve done to yourself,’ I said to him and then closed my eyes. I didn’t want his face to be the last thing I saw. I thought of Morag. Rolleston clenched his fist.
26
I watched my lover die. No. I watched Jakob die. I watched Rolleston tear the heart out of the only man I’d ever loved and crush it. No. Ambassador was gone, so frightened, so lost, so far away from everything he had ever known. We’d used Ambassador as a tool, because of his ability to process vast amounts of information. We were no different to Rolleston and his abuse of Themtech. There was no Themtech, only Them, another race. Ambassador became a weapon, a bridge, part of Pagan to act as a conduit to bring God into the isolated system, to destroy Demiurge and isolate Rolleston. Ambassador had gone, part of me was missing, and Pagan and God were one.
Ambassador was gone and so was Jakob. Both my lovers were dead. I wanted to cut my glass eyes out so I could cry again. I watched Jakob slump forward against Rolleston, this monster, this spoilt child who had done all this, created all this madness.
I watched Josephine Bran back away from her father, looking between him and Jakob’s corpse. You poor woman. How long? I wondered. All the time you served with him on Sirius? Of course you could never say or do anything: you were the Grey Lady. More to the point, Rolleston’s shadow eclipsed you. Bran sat down hard on the floor. Emotion looked foreign on her features. Rolleston turned to her, frowning.
Merle was sitting up watching, his pain under control but helpless without arms. Mudge was sobbing. He could never know. He’d probably kill me. In his own way he had loved Jakob. He wasn’t interested in him in that way but their bonds had run deep. Rannu was frightened. He had every reason to be. He knew from bitter experience that Rolleston lived up to his threats.
Jakob, you fool. He’d made a lot of mistakes. In many ways he was a weak man. He’d done and said a lot of stupid and hurtful things. He kept on trying to do what he thought was best for other people. Not knowing enough to ask them first, to talk to them. But he’d helped me help myself and he never knew when to stop fighting. He tried to be a good friend and he had tried to be as good a man as he knew how. It was enough. I think he was the first person to care for me since my sister died.
Except it was all a lie. Jakob was dead.
I had to control myself.
‘Rolleston?’ I heard myself say. I had to get the shakiness out of my voice. He turned to look at me.
‘You won’t be so lucky. I’ll take my time with the rest of you,’ he said.
There comes a point when threats become superfluous. He wasn’t the first man who thought he’d had power over me.
With a thought I sent the package. All over Rolleston’s recently exorcised fleet, Mudge’s smiling features appeared on IVDs on comms monitors. As tersely and as honestly as possible, Mudge explained to them what had been happening. What had been done to them. His words were supported by the evidence of the monstrosities that the Bush and the Black Squadron frigates had become.
‘You’ve lost,’ I told him.
I think he was unsure for a moment, just a moment, then his features became cruel and confident again. Arrogance — his, mostly — had been the cornerstone of the plan. But arrogance is pretence.
‘How do you work that out? Even now I am transforming the Earth. I control the net.’
I shook my head. ‘Check your net feed.’
Pagan walked across the plain of glass, his staff tapping against its surface. Lightning arced all around him. Anyone or anything which got too close became cinders floating in the virtual air. He glowed blue and white from the inside. He was like a beacon under the burning red sea of the sky. I had to show no reaction as Papa Neon approached what he thought was one of his old friends and was burned to nothing. I felt a strange sense of satisfaction when lightning reached out and destroyed Nuada, because the gods had to know as well. Lessons were being taught. Pagan was God now and God was pissed off. The angels and the other hackers parted for Pagan. He looked magnificent. This was to have been how I died. It would have been a good death, but despite what Jakob said I had wanted to live, but I had wanted all of me to live and he tore part of that away without even asking. No, it wasn’t Jakob who had done that.
‘So?’ Rolleston demanded. ‘He is no match for Demiurge.’ I thought I could detect apprehension in his voice.
The Grey Lady was back on her feet again. She seemed to have recovered and was moving back to her father’s side.
‘That’s the thing though. It’s not one Demiurge, is it? It’s four. Each Demiurge in each system has developed separately. What did you program them for?’
On the plain Pagan/God stood in front of the four black suns and raised his arms high, lifting his staff. Lightning arced out and struck all four of the suns. I heard the Demiurges scream but Pagan/God was just getting their attention.
It was written all over Rolleston’s face. He understood. His arm transformed into a weapon and with a scream of rage he turned and fired at Pagan, whose already burned corpse disappeared in a blast of plasma. The floor of the ship bucked and moved as the plasma turned its biomechanical flesh molten. I felt the heat against my skin and turned away from it.
‘You didn’t get him, Rolleston. He has already gone far beyond your power.’
Pagan/God still stood before the black suns. But then I saw Pagan start to panic. I was pretty sure that gods didn’t panic. Tendrils of black light reached for him from each of the black suns. They wrapped around him, enveloping him, and then tore him apart. I didn’t even flinch. The tendrils withdrew back to the suns.