Free War in Heaven by Gavin Smith

against Them. Mudge had been recording it all for posterity. He’d made them heroes. A difficult word to take seriously, particularly in the military, but it applied here.
    So here we were to send them off, their wake. I suspect they deserved a global celebration. What they got was the five of us drunk out of our minds telling the funniest stories about them we could remember. Mudge told us about the time he’d been hiding in New York. Balor had a meeting with someone from the American government. To make the government man nervous he’d taken the meeting naked, sporting a huge erection in a room completely covered in thinscreens showing footage from wildlife vizzes of fish spawning. Mudge and I told the story about Vicar on the Santa Maria giving me the lock burner he’d hidden in his arse. I told a story I’d heard second-hand about Buck and Gibby accidentally bombing a Them surface-to-air emplacement with live chickens meant for a dinner being held by some hopelessly optimistic officers.
    Everyone had a story of some kind, mainly about Balor, who was better known. Many of them were probably pure myth. Mudge and I knew a reasonable amount about Buck and Gibby, and we all had something to say about our time with them. We got more drunk.
    I hoped that the Hard Luck Commancheros had done the same for Buck and Gibby back in Crawling Town. I also hoped that the pirate nation of New York had done the same for Balor. Though reports out of New York pointed to widespread conflict between factions that had previously been held together by Balor’s sheer force of personality.
    It was Vicar I felt sorry for. He’d never seemed to have any people around him. I’d only known him on the Santa Maria , the trial and then in Dundee. It had mainly been a business relationship. He had provided me with tech I needed when I could afford it. I didn’t think his desperate congregation was going to miss him. Maybe the food and the clothes he gave out, but not all the hellfire and damnation. Did he have any family that would miss him? Did they know? Maybe it was something I should look into. I could tell them just what sort of person the mad old bastard really was. Make them proud. If they cared.
    ‘The sun’s coming up!’ Mudge announced, and the night did seem to be developing a red tinge to it.
    ‘You’re not thinking of quitting now,’ Pagan managed after a number of attempts. ‘Lightweight,’ he added.
    ‘Nope. This wake has moved into the next phase. The one I like to call whore phase!’ Mudge announced. ‘Though I have in the past called it sexually transmitted disease phase.’ Mudge tried standing up but failed. He turned to look at Morag. ‘Don’t worry. I didn’t mean you.’ We all stopped.
    Morag glared at him but then cracked up laughing. She reached over and tugged at his cheek. ‘S’all right, love. I’m not your type, am I?’
    ‘Nope, not enough penises,’ Mudge agreed. Rannu, who was quiet when drunk – at least I hoped he was drunk, the amount he’d had – seemed to be puzzling this comment through.
    ‘How many penises does Morag have?’ he finally asked. We fell about laughing. Rannu just looked confused. We’d had a dangerous amount to drink.
    ‘The question is: how many penises does he want?’ Pagan suggested.
    ‘All of them! All the penises!’ Mudge shouted. There was cheering from the street. ‘Besides, Morag and Jakob have to go and have angry make-up sex!’
    ‘What! Now wait …’ I managed, but Morag just grabbed me.
    ‘C’mon.’
    There was an urgency to it. A need, for both of us. It wasn’t angry but nor was it tender. She rode me as I held her up, her back against the wall of the aging, rotting room at the top of the cantina , the glass door to the balcony open to the dawn air. Maybe it was passion – difficult to remember. She led the way. She was in control. She had to be.
    Because afterwards she sobbed and shook in my arms as I tried to fight off the hangover I so richly