War in Heaven by Gavin Smith Read Free Book Online

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    I didn’t feel quite so bad about killing Them. They may have been innocent dupes of the Cabal but they had been trying to kill me at the time, and it’s a lot easier to kill things that look that different from you. Still, it can’t look good on your application for heaven .
    Then I decided that I’d been spending too much time around hackers and that I didn’t believe in all that religious shit anyway. So where the fuck was I?
    The selfish part of me was happy to see Morag in heaven. Then I started to mourn her death, which I should have done first, piece of shit that I am. Then again, I reminded myself that I didn’t believe in any of that .
    ‘What?’ I managed. Morag smiled. She did look like an angel. Well, like a non-scary one with short spiky hair. She reached down to touch my face. Her hands felt warm. I felt warm and not at all like I was dying from vacuum exposure. Or being torn apart by Them. Or running out of air. Or just getting round to dying of radiation poisoning, which was something that I’d been meaning to do for the last couple of weeks. I also felt very naked and there were ‘things’ in me .
    Mudge proved that I wasn’t in heaven, though hell was possible, by appearing over me, leering. He looked fucking dreadful .
    ‘The good news is you’re not fucking dead; the bad news is there’s no fucking drink to celebrate with,’ he told me. He sounded angry .
    ‘You look awful,’ I managed to sort of squeak. It felt like I hadn’t spoken for a very long time .
    ‘He’s run out of drugs,’ Morag told me .
    ‘They made this for us?’ I asked again. It was taking a lot of getting used to. ‘Are we prisoners?’
    ‘More like stuck,’ Morag answered .
    I was in a cave in the side of an asteroid close to planetoid size. Across the front of the cave was a membrane made of … well, made of Them. Them being the individual bio-nanites that were the actual aliens rather than the Berserks or Ninjas that we had previously thought to be Them .
    This membrane kept us safe from the rigours of vacuum, and other Them-growths were apparently providing air, heating and somewhat unpleasant sanitation facilities. There is nothing quite like having a previously hostile alien species climb up your arse to clean it because they have never had to develop toilet paper. Other growths also provided a kind of unpleasant gruel and a funny-tasting liquid which I think was supposed to be water. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were eating some inert form of Them, perhaps Their dead?
    What They couldn’t produce, much to Mudge’s discomfort, was drugs, cigarettes or vodka. He was mostly a sweating, cramping, pale, feverish bundle of bile in the corner of the cave. I wouldn’t have minded a drink and a smoke myself .
    The membrane was transparent, which allowed us to appreciate just how far out in space we were. I was looking out on what seemed to be a sort of crossroads. There were four very large asteroids including the one I was currently in. They were either tethered or just connected to one another by tubes like biomechanical Them-growths. There were more growths sticking out at all angles from the asteroids. These looked like a cross between organic high-rise buildings and stalagmites or stalactites, depending on your perspective. I recognised this place now. The crooked Them-structures had reminded me of teeth and I’d christened this area Maw City. We were not far from where we had fought Crom .
    We used to think that these structures were Their habitats but now we knew it was just Them. Everything seemed to have a function in Their society. Their roots were deep in the asteroid. They somehow drew out the raw materials from them. With energy harnessed from the system’s twin stars They broke down the raw materials to provide the resources necessary to make Themselves into these awe-inspiring structures .
    Massive tendrils snaked between the asteroids, the growths and the hundreds of Them-ships