by David Gunn
‘You’ve done that before.’
‘At my age, it’s hard to find something I haven’t.’
I’m not sure who’s talking. But I don’t think it’s the girl in front of me.
So we sit in the early morning light, under the shadow of a huge tree, with a sticky wind rustling oak leaves and stirring dust. Her hair is damp at the neck and her skin smells of soap and sweat. I promise to kill General Luc the first chance I get. I promise it will be a slow and painful death and he will die in absolute-
Leona tells me this isn’t what she wants.
She wants me to pay attention. So I try not to notice her scent or how the skin of her neck feels under my touch. Although it doesn’t help my concentration when she shifts back and starts to unzip her jacket, revealing a vee of sweat beneath.
Her breasts shift either side of three dog tags that hide behind her vest’s green cotton. One tag to be buried with her body, one to be returned to her regiment, and one for central records so everything is up to date.
Don’t imagine that will happen.
Removing the chain, Leona ignores her dog tags, and holds up the key next to them. This would be simple, if not for its handle, which looks like the bastard son of a circle and a square.
Then she leans forward and unbuttons my shirt.
Next to my tags is a planet buster.
I took it on Hekati from a man who tried to kill me. He’d been given it by members of the Silver Fist. All he had to do, they told him, was twist its top and all his enemies would disappear.
He should wait until the next full moon.
By then, the shock troops intended to be somewhere else.
Somewhere that turning time inside out and destroying a sentient ring world wasn’t going to cause them problems. Because the U/Free can be very strict about things like that.
Only I screwed their plan and their ship too. Screwed the lot of them. But the ring world still died and I heard it happen.
‘Remembering Hekati?’ Leona says.
I nod abruptly.
‘It will get better.’
She smiles when I growl that I’ll take her word for it. Reaching out, she opens my hand and drops her chain into the middle, folding my fingers around it.
‘Fuck,’ the SIG says. ‘That’s-’
‘None of your business,’ Leona replies.
A tingle like static burns the centre of my palm.
‘Profiling,’ the SIG says. ‘Genotype human equivalent. Status DH class 2, override complete . . .’ It sounds like someone else.
My planet buster has a flip-up top, a purple ring that needs turning to set the core and a locking mechanism to stop the top opening accidentally. The key Leona gives me is simply a key.
‘What do I do with it?’
‘What do keys usually do?’ Taking her chain from my hand, she hangs it round my neck and buttons my shirt, before resting her forehead on mine. ‘The empire is not a thing,’ she says. ‘It’s an idea. You understand?’
‘No. I don’t understand at all.’
‘The long game.’
‘Leona, I can’t play chess.’
‘Then learn fast,’ she says firmly. ‘Or find people to play it for you.’
My face is to the sun and hers in shadow. Over her shoulders, half life-size in the distance, are the Aux, a dozen officers from the Wolf Brigade and the Wolf himself.
I’m impressed he’s left us alone this long.
‘Yes,’ Leona says. ‘I know. It’s time.’
Reaching out, she touches my face and her eyes glisten.
As we climb to our feet, she takes my hand and walks me back to where the others wait. And she keeps her face turned to mine and her smile in place, as if I am the one about to die.
Leona refuses General Luc’s offer of a blindfold.
She does, however, beg a cigarette from Neen, whose fingers shake badly when he lifts his hand to shield the flame. Trickling smoke between her lips, Leona glances round and nods towards a wall.
‘That’ll do, I guess.’
Soldiers from the Wolf Brigade continue loading trucks.
Food and ammunition and crates of weaponry. Kemzin 19s, half a dozen Z93z long-range rifles, a couple of mortars, a heavy machine gun, on a tripod so unwieldy it takes three men to carry.
They turn to watch us as they pass.
We’re a minor part of a play parallel to their own. Nodding to Colonel Vijay, the Wolf says, ‘I’ll leave the arrangements to you.’
Colonel Vijay says nothing.
‘Sir?’ I say.
Both men look in my direction.
It’s easy to read the colonel’s eyes. The last twenty-four hours have filled them with horror, sadness and a sense of hopelessness. The Wolf’s stare is harder to translate.
‘Permission to carry on, sir?’
It is the Wolf who nods.
Pulling my SIG-37 from its holster, I switch to hollow-point while the gun is still at my side and walk towards Leona. She’s still smiling when I raise the SIG and blow out her brains. No one said she had to be against a wall. No one said there had to be a firing party.
‘Find shovels,’ I tell the Aux. ‘Get yourselves over to that oak and dig a grave. I want her buried and prayers said before we move out.’
Sergeant Toro sends for entrenching tools, those flip-down spades with spikes one side and shovel blades the other. I could crack the Wolf’s skull with one blow. Only my idiot colonel gave his word and we’re stuck with that.
Ajac breaks the first of the dirt, hacking through a root that gets in his way. He’s broad and blond and strong as an ox. But he grew up on a deserted ring world in a goat-infested village that called itself a city. He digs until the sweat running down his face hides the tears he’s ashamed to show.
Then Neen volunteers.
He didn’t know Leona. None of them did, not really. But, by the end, she was one of us and that is enough. When Neen is exhausted, I take my turn.
Shucking off my coat, I strip off my shirt, wrap both hands round the handle of the entrenching tool and cut through roots in short, brutal strokes. Each one is General Luc’s skull being smashed beneath my blade.
A crowd begins to gather.
At first I think they’re drawn by the ferocity of my digging. But it’s the scars on my back that have them muttering to each other. They’ve never seen an officer who’s been whipped before, and my scars are clear enough to be counted.
Most men would be dead.
‘Lieutenant,’ says a voice. It’s the Wolf. So I don’t bother to look up.
‘Sir?’ I say, slamming my entrenching tool into a root.
‘Your back . . .’
‘Whipped for hitting an NCO.’
‘You were a trooper?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But you made sergeant?’
‘Made sergeant, sir. Lost it for hitting an officer.’ Another crack of the entrenching tool and its blade skids off a root to split a block of black stone. Obsidian, I’ve seen it before.
‘You were whipped for hitting an NCO. But not for hitting an officer?’
‘The penalty for hitting an officer is death, sir.’
General Luc knows that.
There is probably an army somewhere with different rules. I imagine they’ll lose to the first serious enemy they meet. Militia exist to die. Conscripts hold the enemy’s attention while the professionals get on with the real job.
As for the rest of us . . .
Legion, Death’s Head or Wolf Brigade, it doesn’t matter. Our officers can be trusted to behave in public. The rest, and I include myself in that, are in for life. We’re a fuck of a lot less dangerous to other people that way.
Scrambling from the grave, I discover it’s as deep as I’m tall.
So I carry Leona to the edge and have Neen pass her down to me.
From the front, as she lies face up, staring at the blue sky above, you’d never know that most of the back of her skull is missin
g.
‘Fill it in,’ I tell the Aux.
One of Luc’s officers checks his watch.
The Wolf shakes his head, and the major goes back to staring straight ahead. The men who finish loading their trucks drift over in twos and threes and find themselves staying. When Leona’s grave is full, and its overspill heaped into a mound, as overspill always is, we seem to have most of the Wolf Brigade around us.
Several hundred people bow their heads when I say the soldier’s prayer.
Chapter 43
Theearth is red round here. Scrub clings to the edges of a road, which is broken and scabbed and full of badly mended holes. Stunted trees dot the distance. Twisted pines and cork and something that sheds its bark in leprous strips.
For all that it is hot and dry, the air is cleaner than in Farlight. Much cleaner and much clearer. In the distance a low line of hills stands between us and snow-covered mountains.
Birds circle a clump of distant thorn, wide-winged and lazy.
On the bike ahead, Rachel shifts her gaze. One, two, three, four . . . She’s just judged their speed and distance, allowed for deflection, wind and the diffraction that heat induces, and mentally shot each buzzard through its head.
Colonel Vijay rides at the front.
He won’t look at me.
Actually, he won’t look at anyone.
He just stares ahead and keeps his eyes on the red earth.
Still, if I’d delivered myself into the hands of a man who wants to cut out my heart and fuck my girlfriend, I’d probably be concentrating on the road too. Mind you, I wouldn’t give my parole. So the problem wouldn’t arise.
‘No,’ says the SIG. ‘You’d invent a whole new category of fuck-ups. You know the value of teamwork?’ It waits for my answer, then sighs. ‘You get to blame someone else.’ When I don’t reply to that either, it puts itself to sleep.
We pull into a hill village that afternoon.
There are a thousand like it dotted across the wastes.
An old church, now peeling whitewash. A small square, surrounded by broken buildings. The handful of children who watch us arrive get slapped into silence and dragged inside. Not sure if their mothers expect the Wolf Brigade to eat them, rape them or use them as target practice.
General Luc obviously feels happier to be out of the city, because he commandeers the village bar, its owner, the serving girls and its cook and settles himself at a table out front where he can keep an eye on what is going on.
As he waits, he sends for our colonel.
We’re too far away to hear their conversation. But it ends with Colonel Vijay’s clumsy salute. Never met a senior officer who could salute properly yet.
Turning on his heel, Colonel Vijay heads for where we sit in the shadow of the church’s faded bell tower. When he tells us to stay as we are, we stop climbing to our feet. ‘Sven,’ he says, ‘how are you feeling now?’
‘Better, sir. Thank you. Vomiting helps.’
He sighs. ‘Where are Ajac and Iona?’
‘Inside, sir.’
I imagine they’re lighting candles for Hekati.
‘I eat with General Luc’s officers.’ The colonel’s words are addressed to us all, but he’s staring at me when he says this.
‘Understood, sir.’
He looks relieved.
What does he think? I’m going to tell him he’s an idiot in front of the others? I’m not even going to tell him he’s an idiot when we’re alone. For all that giving his parole is one of the stupidest things I’ve heard.
The next time I see Colonel Vijay he’s next to the Wolf, slicing ewe’s cheese with a blunt knife to eat on fat slabs of dark bread, which he washes down with a local wine. The general is asking his opinion on how many hours it will take a courier to ride from the Wolf’s Lair to Wildeside.
The man’s torturing Colonel Vijay with politeness.
Imagine we’re handcuffed or held in a cage, stripped of our weapons and uniforms and badges of rank. Both sides know where they stand. We’re the naked, shit-covered ones and they’re our captors.
We get to hate them.
They get to regard us with contempt. Everybody is happy.
This way is crueller. The Wolf’s officers reply politely to the colonel’s conversation and let him take his food before them, but there isn’t a single one who doubts their general’s intention to cut out Vijay’s heart.
And he will do it. This is Shadow Luc we’re talking about. Who slit the throats of a Silver Fist’s five children.
God knows, we’ve all cut throats.
An Enlightened eleven-braid, a three-braid and several Silver Fist in my case. But the Wolf did it in cold blood to make a point, because their father refused to surrender.
‘Sir, you OK?’ Shil sits beside me without being invited. Since these are the first words she’s said to me all day, I assume she’s been sent by the others.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
My corporal slicks a sideways glance.
She’s scowling, which might be the light in her eyes, because the sun is eating the edges of the shadow where we sit. I can smell the sweat on her. As surely as I can smell the smoke and stink that clings after any battle.
If that’s what last night was.
‘Colonel Vijay mentioned Leona took his message to Aptitude . . .’
Shil’s choosing her words carefully. There’s a reason for this. Actually, there are a couple of reasons. I’m her lieutenant, and I’ve been known to lose my temper with her. And we’ve talked a couple of times; alcohol was involved and nothing happened, at least not that I remember.
She’s come to see how I feel about executing Leona. How does she think I feel? It occurs to me she doesn’t know.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Really, sir. We all are.’
The idea the Aux are discussing this behind my back doesn’t improve my hangover any. They’re cannon fodder, wasn’t that what I told them at the start? I’m about to remind Shil of this, when a thought closes my mouth.
Leona delivered Vijay’s letter to Aptitude.
‘Later,’ I say.
Stamping to where Colonel Vijay sits, I come to salute.
The Wolf watches me, his ADC watches me. My own troop watch me from where they sit near the church tower. Apart from Shil, who watches from where I was a few seconds ago. Her scowl has nothing to do with the sun this time.
‘Join us,’ Colonel Vijay tells me. He gestures to a bench opposite. So that’s where I sit. ‘Sven,’ he says, sounding formal. ‘I’m so-’
I nod away his sympathy.
The colonel clicks his fingers and a girl appears. Huge eyes and a tight smile. She hides her fear behind a fringe that half-covers her face.
‘More wine,’ he says. ‘And some food.’
Her smile falters. Might be my metal arm. Might be the fact my uniform is so stained with blood I can’t remember whose most of it is. Alternatively, the fact I stink of vomit and alcohol could have something to do with it. Vijay Jaxx is far too polite to mention that fact. But then Colonel Jaxx is high clan.
‘What he had,’ I say.
The cheese is so hard I use my own knife, wiping its blade before hacking myself a chunk. The loaf that arrives with it is oily and tough as old leather. Polite people tear their bread. My old lieutenant taught me that. Luckily I’m not polite.
‘You seem to have found your appetite.’
Looking down, I discover the colonel is right. All the cheese is gone and most of the bread. ‘The kyp’s quieter these days, sir,’ I say.
Colonel Vijay flicks a glance towards General Luc.
The Wolf is concentrating on the glass in front of him. He tastes his wine with the restrained ferocity that underlies everything he does.
There is a tightness to Colonel Vijay’s face . . .
He doesn’t like me talking about the symbiont in public. Actually, it’s not that. His father is dead, he’s going to his own death and the house where he was born is a
burnt-out ruin, all of this inside the last twenty-four hours. Having to pretend it hasn’t happened is killing him.
‘Sir,’ I say. ‘Perhaps we could take a walk?’
General Luc watches us leave.
For all I know, he watches us the entire way round the village square, because that is where we walk, our heads together and my questions low. As we return to where we started, Colonel Vijay retakes his place and dismisses me with a nod.
He demanded a messenger.
Leona appeared.
There is no mystery. No significance. Senior officers often use militia for non-essential messages. He’s sorry for Leona’s death, and understands my action was a kindness, although he doubts if the Aux understand that. When I mention his father our conversation is over. That’s a subject he’s unwilling to discuss.
‘Sir-’
‘Leave it,’ he orders. So I do.
After my dismissal, I don’t expect us to talk again until the evening. I’m wrong about that as well.
Iona sits on a broken wall watched by two Wolf Brigade troopers at a table. As she leans back and raises the hem of her dress to sun her knees, I think she’s pretending not to notice their interest.
But no, they’re invisible.
Only the sun, the wind and the sound of cicadas hold her interest. The insect noise probably reminds her of life on Hekati.
The way she leans back tightens the cloth across her breasts, which are full anyway, and seem fuller because she wears a belt beneath. Her eyes close and she opens her mouth to taste the wind; has to be that, can’t think what else she’s doing as she flicks her tongue like a lizard, a dozen of which hug the wall where she suns.
When one of the two troopers attracts her attention by putting his hand on her knee, Iona jumps.
‘Heart rate up, pupil dilation, rapid breathing . . .’ The SIG counts off the shock signs. ‘Yep, she really is that stupid.’
‘Unworldly,’ Colonel Vijay says.
‘Sir . . . Sorry, sir. Didn’t hear you come up behind me.’
His attention is on Iona, who is finding it hard to move now the Wolf Brigade trooper grips her knee. Every time she struggles, he tightens his fingers and she stops struggling again. Iona needs to crack that pain barrier.