by David Gunn
‘But, sir-’
‘Stand your team down, lieutenant.’
‘Fucking great,’ the SIG says. Diodes fade along its chassis as I flick it into sleep mode.
‘You heard the colonel,’ I tell the Aux.
Very slowly, Neen lowers the muzzle of his rifle so it no longer points at Sergeant Toro, and Anton takes his blade from their corporal’s throat. Sergeant Toro’s first punch takes Neen from his feet.
Anton is raising his blade when the Wolf’s snarl demands silence.
‘Enough . . .’ He nods to me. ‘Your men will put their weapons on the ground. And you,’ he scowls at his sergeant. ‘Don’t let that happen again.’
‘Let the Aux keep their weapons.’
That’s not me talking, obviously.
‘If you will accept my parole,’ Colonel Vijay says, ‘I guarantee no one under my command will use their weapons against you or your men.’
Fucking idiot.
‘Your word as a Jaxx?’
‘No,’ Leona says. ‘His word as the new Duke of Farlight.’
Both men stare at her and the Wolf sneers. ‘Have an heir, do you?’ he asks Colonel Vijay.
The colonel shakes his head.
‘Then it’s going to be a short dukedom, isn’t it?’ The Wolf grins, showing yellow teeth. When he tells Colonel Vijay his parole is accepted, the colonel bows slightly. Nodding at me, the Wolf says, ‘Get your rabble in formation.’
I pass this command to Neen.
‘My son,’ the archbishop says. He’s keeping his distance from General Luc, which seems wise given the blood dripping from a cut over the prelate’s eye. ‘You must give him up for trial . . .’
He gestures. As if pointing the way to the promised land.
‘Here comes the truck.’
Two police officers hang from its doors, riding shotgun. They look young and excited to be part of history. Their chief should have chosen two who knew what they were doing.
‘Close ranks,’ General Luc says.
The Wolf Brigade tighten their formation.
We could use their new focus to fight free. Colonel Vijay must know what I’m thinking, because he catches my gaze and shakes his head.
‘Boss,’ Neen says. ‘Can’t we ignore him?’
I’ve been wondering that myself. It’s not like we’re high clan ourselves, so why should we be bound by Vijay’s stupidity? Except the colonel was our CO on Hekati, and for all I know he’s the highest ranking Third Regiment officer alive on Farlight.
‘No,’ I say. ‘We can’t.’
But we can stop Sebastian Thomassi getting his hands on the man. I have the Aux fall in beside the Wolf Brigade. Colonel Vijay gave his word we wouldn’t fight General Luc’s men. He said nothing about not fighting anybody else.
Halting, the truck opens its doors and ten prison guards jump out. They’re everything you’d expect, from the guts hanging over their gun belts to the coffee stains on their flak jackets. They’ve even got cattle prods and extendable batons in little leather pouches at their sides.
I don’t like prison guards.
Given the number of prisons I’ve been in that’s understandable.
Stumbling to a halt, they only take formation when their NCO barks an order. The police officers look less happy than they did a few seconds before.
‘Sir,’ the older one says.
He is addressing Colonel Vijay.
Instead of being offended, General Luc laughs. And it occurs to me the officer only talks to Vijay because he’s afraid to talk direct to the Wolf.
‘I need your surrender for trial, sir.’
‘On what charges?’
‘Being a member of an illegal organization.’
‘A what?’
‘You’re a colonel in the Third Regiment. That regiment of the Death’s Head is now proscribed. All officers, NCOs and soldiers are to surrender immediately. Failure to surrender is punishable by death.’
He’s reciting from memory. Obviously enough.
‘Death?’ The Wolf looks interested.
‘Refusal to surrender constitutes treason to our newly elected leader Prince Thomassi.’
‘Who elected him?’ Leona demands.
The police officer ignores her.
‘And he’s not a prince,’ I add. ‘And he’s only a senator because his brother died.’
‘Sven,’ says Anton, ‘you’re not helping.’
That’s fine. I’m not interested in helping. I want the Wolf Brigade to attack the police and guards while we spectate. A little friendly fire, and the Wolf’s down and Colonel Vijay’s conscience is clear.
Unfortunately, the colonel is regretting he can’t oblige. He has surrendered already and it’s impossible to do so twice. He says this politely. Of course, should the Wolf decide he doesn’t want the colonel’s surrender . . .
General Luc’s lip curls.
The police officers go pale.
Nodding to his driver, the Wolf climbs into his scout car and we hear its engine start. He nods again. To Colonel Vijay, this time. I have no doubt that General Luc intends to cut out his captive’s heart. But he still offers him a ride.
High clans. Fucking insane, the lot of them.
Chapter 41
‘Sven . . .’
Yeah, I know. The road’s this way. Grabbing my bars, I blip the throttle and jump a ditch, missing a man who opens his mouth to swear. Only to shut it again at the sight of my face. Wise move. Although I’m too drunk to go back and kill him. So maybe he’s not in that much danger after all.
Given I’ve finished a bottle of cane spirit, it’s a miracle I can steer this thing. Mind you, it has three wheels and that probably helps. An Icefeld couldn’t cope with the state I’m in.
Someone got splashed the last time I vomited.
Shil probably, knowing my luck. Something else for her to get sour-faced and tight-lipped about. Luckily, I’ve got a second bottle in the pocket of my coat. So I don’t care that much.
We’re getting out of Farlight.
So is half the city from the look of it.
But we’re having a better time of it than they are.
A broken-down truck with an armchair tied to its flat-bed sits up ahead, guarded by an old doubter woman, who slumps on the chair, with a crying child on her lap. The child clutches a doll.
A hover taxi lies burnt-out in a ditch. Given its age and rust, and the patches of rot pocking its neoprene skirt, I’m surprised it made it this far. Gyrobikes wobble under the weight of two adults and more children than their riders can afford to feed.
The city obviously started emptying hours ago.
But we plough our way through the lot. General Luc doesn’t bother with sirens. Vehicles and people move out of our way or get driven off the road as the Wolf Brigade convoy roars by.
Three personnel carriers, five scout cars, sporting light machine guns. A pair of anti-tank missile launchers, with pintel mounts. Three transporters, loaded with food, water and ammunition . . .
The SIG gives me the list.
I tell it to shut up.
It tells me Aptitude was more fun than this.
Everyone in the Aux avoids me. Don’t blame them. Not their fault if I’m drunk. Apparently, Shil thought I was over behaving like this. Fuck knows where she got that idea. Don’t appreciate the SIG telling me either.
I blame Sergeant Leona. She landed me with the shit about thinking ahead, long games and people changing. Undoing my second bottle, I swear when the SIG says that’s a bad idea, and swap them around. The SIG-37 goes in my pocket and the bottle goes in my holster, an altogether better arrangement.
My combat trike is really just a fat-wheel with added light machine gun. I’m riding one. We’re all riding one. The bastards have even left the LMG’s belt in place. A clanking strip of 7.62 knitted with twists of ceramic. The LMG is automatic, gas-operated, belt-fed, air-cooled . . .
Our glorious leader’s usual shit. I wonder the Wolf is stu
pid enough to leave us loaded guns given the way I feel. The SIG tells me he’s not.
The pin has been shaved.
General Luc is up ahead. His vehicle identical to the one at Wildeside. Long snout, short back, weird turret. Painted grey, flying his flag. Still looks like a wolf’s skull on wheels.
‘Same one, fuckwit . . .’
Being in my pocket makes the SIG sound muffled.
The road we travel steams with early rain. The clouds have burnt away, and with them our protection from the early-after-noon sun. It will be worse later, when we hit the wastelands. Everyone rides in silence, staring ahead. No one knows what to say. And I’m not ready to say anything. Not yet.
So we wrestle with our fat-wheels, set our faces to the hot wind, wipe dust from our visors and head down Farlight’s slopes towards a gash through the wastes beyond.
Our route to the high plains.
There are seven of us and there should be nine.
Like I said, General Luc rides ahead. The personnel carriers ride behind. Four of the fat-wheels are used by Luc’s men. They act as our guards and as the Wolf’s outriders. Five hundred Wolf Brigade in all.
Drones fly overhead, all stubby wings and afterburners. They’re worked by a pale-faced girl who sits up front in a scout car, with a pad on her knee that she scratches with one nail as she flicks them round the sky. Not sure what she’s-
Oh, fuck it.
Upending the bottle, I swallow half in one go.
‘Sven,’ the gun says. ‘This isn’t helping.’ Shows what it knows.
The trucks are being loaded with supplies. The officers will travel separately from the men, and the NCOs separately from both. There’s even less mixing of ranks in the Wolf Brigade than in the Death’s Head, and there was little enough there.
Imagine it reflects General Luc’s tastes.
This is a memory, in case you didn’t realize. Not even the second bottle of cane spirit is enough to wash it away. So I guess I’ll be living with it for a while.
In my memory, we line up and the Wolf walks himself down our line.
As if we’re on parade, and he’s inspecting us. Colonel Jaxx is two paces behind. Still in his uniform and wearing his side arm. His loaded side arm, because General Luc lets him keep his rounds. The colonel looks younger than he is. And, God knows, he’s young enough.
The Wolf stops twice.
Once in front of me. Staring me up and down, he asks if I’m glad to have my arm back.
‘Yes . . .’
‘You call him sir,’ Colonel Jaxx snaps.
‘Yes, sir.’
General Luc nods. ‘That’s better.’
‘I was talking to my colonel.’
The Wolf’s eyes tighten. Leaning close, he takes a long look at my skull. I know it’s wide. I’m just not used to people making their interest so obvious.
‘So,’ he says. ‘The last human.’
I salute so fast it’s like a spring uncoiling. General Luc isn’t sure how he feels about that. ‘Checked your record,’ he says. ‘Did you really destroy an Enlightened mother ship?’
‘Not by myself, sir.’
He smiles. ‘Now we get to the truth. What help did you have?’
‘That lot.’ I jerk my head towards the Aux.
The Wolf’s wondering if I’m mocking him. Takes a moment for him to decide I’m not and he likes that even less. ‘Near original,’ he says. ‘Isn’t that what the Uplifted said?’
‘Yes, sir.’
How the fuck does he know about that?
I’d always assumed I’m human, plus. Not that it matters since our glorious- our late, no longer glorious leader declared all forms of human equal. But it seems I’m not. Everyone else is human, minus.
They probably believe they have the bad bits cut out.
The second time he stops is at the end of the line where Anton should be. Anton, who is with us right up to the point General Luc announces he’s abandoning Farlight for the Wolf Brigade’s mountain HQ; and then vanishes, along with five million credits on an open chip, although that’s not something the rest know.
‘Ah yes,’ he says. ‘Our missing hero.’
‘Sir,’ I say.
Grey eyes flick towards me.
‘Anton wasn’t Aux.’
The Wolf smiles. ‘No,’ he says. ‘You’re right. He wasn’t. Was he?’ There’s something dangerously silky in his voice. ‘You’re saying your colonel’s parole didn’t apply to him?’
I shrug. The Wolf is not amused. I’m not sure I care.
‘Well?’ he growls.
‘How the fuck would I know? My childhood was spent stealing food on a planet you’ve never heard of, sir. It took the man who shot my sister to teach me not to eat with my fingers, shit in public and kill animals for fun.’
‘Is there a point to this?’
‘Yeah . . . If it wasn’t for Colonel Vijay I’d have killed you by now, set fire to your corpse and pissed on the ashes.’
He stares at me. ‘Are you really a Death’s Head lieutenant?’
‘General Jaxx’s choice.’
‘That true?’ the Wolf asks Colonel Vijay.
‘My father was an astute judge of men.’
‘Anton Tezuka and I have history,’ General Luc tells him. ‘Did Anton mention that? Such an ambitious young man.’ The general bares his teeth. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I always wondered what Anton saw in my well-connected, beautiful, absurdly rich fiancee.’
‘Senator Wildeside?’ The colonel looks shocked.
‘Yep,’ I say. ‘Debro.’
The general’s eyebrows rise at my use of her first name. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I forget. The dashing young lieutenant saves the disgraced senator from the insane and ravening inmates of an ice planet. Demands her freedom as his reward for destroying an Uplifted mother ship. Are you in love with her?’
My expression makes him bark with laughter.
‘I’ll take that as a no.’
It wasn’t the five million in credits that made Anton desert us. At least, not entirely; although no doubt that helped his decision. As General Luc walks up and down our line, I replay his words in my head. You’re right. He wasn’t. Was he?
Anton didn’t trust the Wolf not to take his revenge.
Right now, General Luc is pretending to talk to himself and we’re listening carefully, because our lives depend on it.
‘I could keep some of you and kill the rest,’ he says. ‘Or simply kill all of you. Only I can’t kill your colonel, can I? Because he’s given parole and, anyway, his heart needs to be fresh.’
Vijay Jaxx says nothing.
So I guess they’ve had that conversation already.
‘And tempting as it is I can hardly kill you, can I?’ he says, looking at me. ‘Last human and all. What with you having freed Debro. Given I intend to marry her daughter . . .’
Colonel Vijay’s head does twitch at that.
‘But,’ he says. ‘Someone has to pay for Anton’s desertion.’
Stopping by Rachel, he raises her head. ‘Hard enough to find snipers as it is.’
Neen he passes without comment. Good sergeants are as valuable as snipers. Noting the corporal’s stripes on Shil’s uniform, and the sour way she scowls at him, the Wolf grunts his approval. Ajac stares straight ahead. Iona is in tears . . .
‘You,’ General Luc tells her. ‘Step out of line.’
‘Take me instead,’ Ajac says, stepping forward.
‘You’re lovers?’ The Wolf sounds amused.
‘Cousins,’ Ajac says. ‘And she’s precog. That has to be worth something.’
The Wolf looks between them, eyes hard as flint, noting their family likenesses. ‘Your accent,’ he demands. ‘What is it?’
‘Hekati,’ says Iona. She manages to hiccup in the middle.
‘You’re from Hekati?’
Iona nods, not realizing she’s saved. No way will the Wolf kill the last two survivors from the oldest of habitats. The first
one to become sentient and aware. Keep Iona as his mistress, and make Ajac his servant, quite possibly.
But not kill them.
‘That leaves you,’ he tells Leona.
She smiles. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It does.’
‘You think that’s amusing?’
Leona runs her gaze up his uniform, stopping at his face. Grey eyes, swept-back hair, a scar that whitens his cheek. ‘General Luc, commander of the Wolf Brigade, bound to protect the emperor by blood and oath.’ Her smile grows wider. ‘You have no idea how funny it is.’
Chapter 42
In a corner of the wolf’s parade ground in Farlight, under an oak tree that looks as if it’s been there as long as the barracks, which must have been there since the beginning, Leona says goodbye to me. She wraps both arms around my neck and holds tight, resting her head on my chest. I shouldn’t let my hand slip, but I do.
Her bottom is as perfect in the flesh as it is in bronze.
I can feel her grin.
‘Sven,’ she says. ‘They’re about to shoot me.’
‘For real?’
She prises herself away. Lets me see her face. She’s still smiling, but looks slightly puzzled.’ How do you mean for real?’
‘You’ll die like everyone else?’
Snuggling close, she rests her head again, and I feel her nod. ‘We’ve been through this. When the bullets hit, flesh will tear and muscles will rip. My lungs will fail, my vision cloud. I’ll be fighting for life long after any chance of it has gone.’
Leona grips me tighter when I try to pull away.
‘Sit for a second,’ she says. ‘Luc’s given me time to say goodbye.’
Dropping to a crouch, she points to a patch of dirt next to her. So I sit cross-legged beside her.
‘Sven,’ she says. ‘Can I look at the gun?’
She field-strips the SIG so fast my eyes barely follow her fingers. And she lays it out in front of her according to the official manual for a Colt-37, which is what it used to be before it was upgraded to full SIG AI and cinder maker capacity.
Having done that, she slides free its chip.
Breaks the chip into five smaller pieces and reassembles it just as swiftly. Less than thirty seconds later the SIG-37 is swearing blue murder and Leona’s nodding to herself with a pleased smile on her face.