War in Heaven by Gavin Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

moving through this apparent nexus point. I watched as one moved in front of me, completely obscuring my view. The tendrils moved anything from Berserks up to frigate-sized ships around. It was one of these things I’d seen grab Morag .
    The whole place was crawling with Them. There were Berserks, Walkers and other things that we had previously thought to be vehicles. I also recognised a lot of the ship configurations I saw from footage of fleet actions .
    If I strained and used the magnification on my optics I could see beyond Maw City. There were fields of a coral-like substance, where everything from Berserks to dreadnoughts were being grown and born. Deeper still I could see the cored hollow remains of exploited asteroids .
    All the Them-forms we were used to seeing were black – combat forms, I guessed. But many here were white and had a pale-blue bioluminescent glow that I had become used to seeing in the honeycombed energy matrices of Their engines. It was the same bioluminescence that lit our little cavern. I had always thought it beautiful. Not that I could have told anyone. Maybe Morag, though even she’d take the piss .
    The growths handling the air made it feel like there was a warm wind constantly blowing through the cavern. Apparently getting the heating, water and temperature right had been touch and go, initially. When I had been dying. There was kind of a lot to take in .
    I looked at my hand. There were no scabs or sores, just healthy armoured flesh and boosted muscle. I felt great, no nausea. In fact it had been a long time since I had felt this good. Though I would have liked a cigarette .
    ‘So let me see if I understand you properly. They ate all the unhealthy flesh and replaced or regrew it, at a cellular level. Is that correct?’ I asked again. I heard Pagan sigh. I didn’t really blame him, I had asked that question a lot recently .
    He was sitting leaning against the wall in his inertial armour suit. He had his staff fully assembled and it lay across his lap .
    Pagan was in his forties and one of the oldest people I knew who wasn’t a member of a powerful secret government of arseholes. He was thin, his skin weathered and covered in various spiralling tattoos. Some of the tattoos were implanted circuitry to aid the ugly utilitarian integral computer that stuck out of half his skull. Unruly orange dreadlocks sprouted out from the other half. He was currently scratching at his scalp, running his hand through his dreads .
    ‘Yes. We have similar treatments, but they tend to be only available to the wealthy,’ Pagan explained. Again .
    ‘So am I an alien?’ I asked again .
    ‘Undoubtedly,’ Mudge groaned. He was lying on the floor, which was covered, in a soft, comfy, moss-like material. He was wearing only a pair of white boxers with hearts all over them. He got up onto all fours and started crawling towards the sanitation growth .
    ‘No,’ Morag said. She also sounded agitated. She was wearing her underwear and a T-shirt and sitting on a rock also covered in the moss. I couldn’t help but be distracted by her shapely legs. She was small, but the exertions of our time together had hardened her up. That could be seen in the tone of her muscles and sadly in her features as well. It did not detract from how attractive I found her .
    Her hair had been shaved off so that the sophisticated integral computer she used for hacking could be implanted. Her hair was growing back but was still short, though it did cover most of the implant. The integral computer had been a high-end civilian model provided by Vicar so it was not as obtrusive as the military model sticking out of Pagan’s skull .
    I missed her eyes. After Rolleston and the Grey Lady had blown the side out of the media node, the explosive decompression had permanently blinded her. She had had her eyes replaced with cybernetic ones. They provided her with similar capabilities to the rest of us – magnification, thermographics, low