by David Gunn
He’s dead, bullet through his skull before the cobble even lands at his killer’s feet. But the guard’s movement gives the fury its next target. As the creature lurches forward, the other guard sights his pulse rifle. The blast burns through the fury, fries a hole in the guts of a militia corporal behind and sets on fire the hip of a woman beyond.
Makes no difference.
Closing on the Death’s Head NCO, the fury reaches for his heart.
Blood pumps up the creature’s arm and pisses from the hole burnt in its gut. Staring death in the eyes, the NCO thrusts his rifle under the fury’s chin and pulls the trigger.
They fall together.
Scooping out the first guard’s guts, the other fury plunges its fingers into his ribcage and reaches for his heart. The man dies in silence. But he still dies.
Job done, the creature turns and the crowd falls back as it exits the little square. Pot belly protruding from under silver ribs as its minders with their armbands and rags on sticks lead it away.
‘Fuck,’ Leona says.
A corporal beside her nods.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t want their job.’
He’s noticed Leona’s ferox-skull armband, for all that she is out of uniform.
‘Which battalion?’ he asks.
Leona looks at me. The wrong thing to do.
‘Let it go,’ I say. ‘You don’t have the clearance.’
Those magic words. He nods reluctantly, checks out my coat and weapons. Probably without even knowing it. Not sure what he sees. A blood-splattered, one-armed ex-Legion sergeant clutching a hunting rifle, a dagger at his hip, an oversized abattoir revolver in his belt, and an official band wrapped round the arm he does have?
Maybe.
Alternatively, he hears the warning in my voice. Who knows how other people make their choices? Well, maybe you do. I don’t give it much thought.
At the top of the blood-slicked steps, a militia sergeant catches a crowbar, rams it between the door and its frame and dies nastily. A thousand darts dicing him down to chopped meat. What did he think? That the house of General Indigo Jaxx would be undefended?
‘Use explosives,’ someone shouts.
The militia corporal who likes Leona grins.
Pulling a grenade from his belt, he yanks the pin and hurls it at an upper window. I’m out of there, dragging Leona behind me, before his grenade has time to bounce from the bombproof glass and roll back to his feet.
A trooper next to him loses everything below her knees.
The corporal loses his balls. And they both lose their lives shortly afterwards, as their blood spreads out in little rivers from the cobbles beneath them. The crowd’s night of happy looting has just turned sour.
Can’t say I’m upset.
I’m waiting to see if anyone else has a bright idea, when the sound of a battle tank comes from behind us. That obvious rattle of ceramic treads, and the low rumble of an engine designed to grind its way across pretty much anything.
The crowd scatters.
That’s just to give the tank space.
‘Old-model Tusker,’ Leona tells me. ‘RR52-MBT. Heavy plating, fully rotating turret, two main guns, five LMG . . .’
I’ll take her word for it.
Main battle tanks combine heavy and medium capacity. Their plate is thick enough to survive a direct hit. But the chassis is light enough to allow them reasonable manoeuvrability and distance, supposedly.
Never used them at Ilseville. There were no powered vehicles on Hekati. And something that clumsy wouldn’t last many minutes in the sands round Karbonne. Can’t see the point of tanks myself.
Slowly, the Tusker halts.
Its turret begins to swivel. Inside, someone turns a dial or taps a touchpad or whatever the RR52 needs to raise its gun. The barrel steadies, quivers and then drops slightly.
The first shot blows off the door.
Actually, it blows the door’s frame out of the wall, takes a hundred bricks with it and reveals a spider’s web of pipes powering the needle gun. It also demolishes three internal walls and leaves a hole in the back of the house you could drive the tank through.
OK, I’m beginning to get tanks now.
As the crowd cheers and the hatch flips on the Tusker’s turret, allowing the gunner to take his bow, dust billows from the doorway and settles to reveal a man standing halfway up a flight of stairs holding a side arm.
His first shot drills the gunner through the head. And the crowd’s cheers turn to anger.
‘Jaxx,’ shouts a voice.
‘Get him,’ someone screams.
They’re shocked by their own courage. It’s the courage of crowds.
Everyone is shouting and no one wants to make the first move. Even the senior militia officers look stunned as General Jaxx descends broken stairs towards his missing front door.
None of them raises his own side arm.
That’s going to prove temporary, of course. All the same, it’s impressive to see the whole square still and watch General Jaxx’s sheer presence reduce the crowd to silence. This is the general after all.
He’s tall and thin.
Wire-framed glasses are his only affectation. And his uniform is immaculate. Even the silver and black dagger at his hip looks recently polished. From his neck hangs an Obsidian Cross, with oak leaves and extra crown. The general has dressed for the occasion.
Right down to a ferox-skulled armband.
‘Back,’ someone shouts.
As the crowd scatters and then freezes, three furies enter the square, herded by half a dozen militia with their rags on sticks. Red eyes watch us, snub noses wrinkle at the smell of blood. Needle-like teeth grin from narrow jaws.
The vinegar stink is unmissable.
I seem to be the only person to recognize the cylinder strapped to the general’s back and the nozzle that juts from his hand. A braided hose stretches from cylinder to nozzle. Although the hose is nearly invisible in the dust, shadows and darkness. The hose is black, obviously. Like the general’s boots, his uniform, his cap and the pressure tank on his back.
General Jaxx smiles. A cold, brutal and brilliant smile.
As he steps into the doorway I tell Leona to move. She doesn’t obey quickly enough. So I push her in front of me as I force my way towards the edge of the crowd. A militia colonel watches us leave but breaks eye contact when I glare at him.
The general’s attack comes without warning.
A flash of ignition that lights sticky liquid pumped from the high-pressure cylinder strapped to his back, and then a dripping hose-length of flame. I’ve faced it before, dropped from planes and poured down shafts to burn out underground bunkers.
Most of these people don’t even know flamefire exists. The furies have obviously never met it. Wrapping their leathery skin, it burns so fiercely that skin peels like tissue paper to reveal burning flesh and melting machinery beneath. Steel bones twist with the heat and joints rupture themselves.
The general achieves this without appearing to move.
When a militia NCO goes for his gun, General Jaxx redirects his nozzle, incinerating the NCO, the men either side of him and half a dozen of those behind. The furies died silently. These die screaming.
‘You can surrender,’ he tells the crowd. ‘Or we can play some more.’
‘We’re going to kill you.’
The voice is rough. Too rough. Like someone pretending to be campesino. The general sneers. ‘You think I don’t know that? I knew my time was up the moment our glorious leader decided to cancel his meeting.’
He glares at the crowd. And laughs harshly when they cringe as he twitches the flame-thrower nozzle. Ice-blue eyes sweep over us.
‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Surely one of you rabble has the guts.’
I’m not sure he can see our faces, because the searchlight on him must put most of us in darkness. We can see him, however. And no one can miss the contempt in his face. Until tonight, General Indigo Jaxx, Duke
of Farlight, was the most powerful man in this city. What’s more, he’s held my life in his hand and opened his fingers more than once. I owe him my membership of the Death’s Head and my promotions. For all that he now wants me dead.
An order is given.
Five militia rush the door and burn like candles, falling in flames at the general’s feet. Having kicked the closest down the steps, he searches for the colonel who gave the order and smiles.
‘Guido,’ he says. ‘You can do better than that.’
A cobblestone is thrown, then another. Neither hits, and the general doesn’t react. He is looking over the throwers’ heads to what is behind them. Eight furies and a dozen minders, appearing out of a side street and hesitating at the opposite edge of the crowd.
Seeing this, the crowd moves back and freezes.
The general’s smile widens.
God, you’ve got to love this man.
He might be a murderer, commander of a regiment feared on a thousand different planets, as unremitting as thirst in the desert, and implacable as a blizzard or ice closing over a lake, but his bravery is beyond question.
As the furies advance, he steadies himself.
The rest of us are irrelevant. He sees only the silver-skinned creatures moving towards him with their loping gait and sloped faces. Their fingers flex as the hunger takes them and they head for the kill only to hesitate when they sense his armband.
Three turn to writhing pillars with his first blast.
Another two attack and he flames them as well. All die in silence. No one doubts the intensity of their pain or the depth of agony that drops them to their knees, before leaving them blackened and stinking husks on the cobbles.
‘Sven,’ he says suddenly.
People turn to see who he’s addressing.
‘Come to see me die?’
I shake my head. That’s not my reason for being here.
The general shrugs, and says something too quietly for me to hear. Guess he’s talking to himself. As a fury shambles forward, General Jaxx sets his feet, twists his body, and steadies the nozzle again.
Flame streaks from his hand and bathes his attacker in fire, dripping in molten splashes around its feet.
‘Fuck,’ says Leona.
She’s not talking about the fury.
The general must have known this would happen eventually. The flamefire that roars from the nozzle suddenly splutters, splutters again and begins to weaken. In all, he’s killed nearly fifteen of the creatures.
‘You ready?’ I ask Leona.
‘Always, sir,’ she says.
Reminds me of myself, that girl. ‘Right, then cover my back if needed. And be prepared to fall back when I give the word.’
A dozen militia watch me drag the revolver from my belt. Officers, NCOs and men. Only their colonel, the man General Jaxx called Guido, looks as if he might react. He doesn’t say anything, however, or issue orders. The light machine gun Sergeant Leona points at his guts sees to that.
Turning to where General Jaxx stands, I hold up the piece. I don’t give a fuck that he was intending to have me killed. Hell, I’d have had me killed if I were him.
‘Sir,’ I shout.
He almost stumbles under the gun’s weight.
‘Sven,’ he says, ‘what is this?’
‘An abattoir pistol.’
He breaks it open, counts the rounds and flicks it shut again. Then he stares round at the dead bodies, the burnt furies and the waiting crowd. ‘An abattoir pistol? How apt. And Sven . . .’
I wait.
‘It’s an abattoir pistol, sir.’
Who knows how the general thumbs the oversized hammer while ducking an attacking fury’s first blow? Maybe his muscles are boosted. Takes General Jaxx two shots to kill the leading fury. A single shot to kill the one behind. Two rounds left and three furies to kill. He lived a bastard and will die a hero.
He’ll be happy with that.
I don’t stop to watch it happen.
Chapter 32
DEATH TO GENERAL JAXX BECOMES DOWN WITH OCTOV.
Beginning raggedly, the chant gathers force. The crowd in the next square finds courage in its anger. All the militia units around them do is nod. Someone rips a picture of the emperor from a bar wall and that’s enough. The crowd turns from looting doubter houses to destroying posters and breaking statues.
As the window of a liquor store goes in, a boy clambers over brandy bottles to smash a figurine of OctoV in full uniform. When Leona steps forward, I grab her and swing her into a wall. ‘Get yourself killed in your own time. Until then, behave.’
The rumours start a few minutes later.
OctoV has been captured. He has been killed. He has taken refuge with our enemies the Enlightened. No, the Enlightened are our friends. OctoV’s on the run in Farlight. Then it is Vijay’s turn to drive the rumour.
The general’s son hides in a house on the next street. This is untrue, as we discover when we reach the building. He’s crossing the river. One of the rusted wrecks on the Emsworth landing fields is really a combat craft in disguise.
I don’t bother to follow the splinter group heading north.
The landing fields are a mountain of rust, broken spider bots and shacks. Anything in there that works was stolen years ago. And Per Olsen would have told me if anything strange was happening on his patch.
The crowd’s need to find Vijay is interesting.
Not so much what drives it.
As who drives it.
In twenty-nine years of life, most of those with the Legion, and one in the Death’s Head, I’ve seen my share of slaughter and looting. But something other than anger and alcohol is driving this crowd.
It goes one way, houses burn.
The crowd chooses another and a temple goes up in flames.
Bars are looted and shops destroyed, doubters die. Yet whole streets remain untouched. Some suffer only broken windows. And always, the cry false or true is what decides the crowd. At first Leona and I think there are a dozen voices making the call.
Then we realize there are only three or four.
Word comes that Vijay Jaxx is hiding in a hotel near the river. It has to be true, because sappers take apart roadblocks to allow us passage. The furies left don’t follow, being satiated and dazed with overfeeding.
Most are already in mobile cages, herded there by men holding those rags on sticks. Dropped from a zep, picked up on the ground. For all its seeming chaos, this night has had military planning from the beginning.
We’re jostling across an embankment. Well, Leona is. The crowd keeps its distance from me. Might be the blood on my coat, my height or the broadness of my shoulders. Might be the fact I punch the first jostler in skeleton clothes into unconsciousness before stamping on his ankle and tossing him into the water.
‘Sir,’ Leona says.
The rest of her sentence goes unsaid.
General Jaxx’s death leaves me sick in the gut. You can’t expect a general to be like other soldiers. And you can’t expect soldiers to be like other men. We’re different. Simply killing doesn’t make a soldier. We fight for what we believe. And if we forget what that is we fight until we remember.
The people around me will never be soldiers. You think I have contempt for this rabble in their carnival clothes? You’re right, I came from far worse. I can’t say I made good, but I made different.
‘Sir,’ Leona tries again. ‘Permission to—’
‘Get on with it.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To save Colonel Vijay’s hide.’
She shoots me a glance. ‘How will we do that, sir?’
How the fuck would I know? When I’ve got an answer, I’ll share. Then again, maybe I won’t. Must be something in the air, but I’m starting to mistrust Anton and Leona both. Don’t doubt myself though.
Armoured cars at the embankment end draw back to let us through. Militia officers sneer from open hatches. Makes me wonder what they think we
’ve done that they haven’t. We’re not the ones who turn back doubters fleeing for safety.
‘Grim,’ says Leona, looking round.
Her first comment on the events of the night. Although night is the wrong word. Darkness is passing and I can see dawn shimmer on the distant slopes.
‘This way,’ someone shouts.
It’s always someone. We never see who.
But a voice shouts, and the crowd surges towards the old wrought-iron gates of a riverside mansion. Grabbing Leona, I drag her out of the crush and towards an alley. If people object, they keep it to themselves. And if they show any emotion, it’s to gaze sympathetically at Leona, who lets herself be dragged behind me.
I know this place . . .
A very grand hotel where Paper Osamu stayed when the UFree were having their embassy redecorated. The thought makes me consider how little I’ve seen of the United Free tonight. Surprising in itself, since the UFree pride themselves on their role as unbiased observers to the galaxy’s trouble spots.
I spit, and a smartly dressed man glares before turning away.
Can’t believe the idiot doesn’t recognize me. Mind you, seeing Federico Van Zill does wonders for my anger. He’s that ex-gangster Per Olsen mentioned. The one who went missing from the slums below Calinda Gap. For all his current aura of importance he was born a slimebag and will die one.
Preferably soon.
These days, it seems, he’s wearing suits and expensive shoes and working for . . .? Now there is a question.
Mind you, I know why Vijay’s here.
You don’t run black ops out of your regular base and this has U/Free written all over it. I thought OctoV was behind tonight until the crowd changed its chant. Now I know it’s Paper’s mob who are driving the slaughter. And since they’re not going to run this out of their embassy, and she or Morgan will want to be on site, this is the next best guess for their centre of operations.
Looks like Colonel Jaxx has been playing the guessing game too.
Chapter 33
A NAKED CHAMBERMAID CLUTCHES THE REMAINS OF HER uniform at the top of a flight of stairs. She has blood on her lips and between her thighs. A puddle of piss darkens the red carpet beneath her.