by David Gunn
‘Save it. Colonel Vijay leads, OK? No arguments.’
She nods blindly and rises to a crouch. I hear the crack of a rifle, a cry from the trees below and then silence. The ejército should be dead now, only they’re opening fire again. Our enemy have reinforcements. I know that, otherwise Neen would be here now.
Whatever it takes.
Wish I had been able to make that true.
It’s a hundred paces to the gate. But it’s uphill and she will be in the open. I can see fear growing in her eyes. Any minute now, Shil’s resolve will fail.
Can’t let that happen. ‘Go now,’ I try to say.
But the clouds are red and the night’s gone pink. I can hear Aptitude’s voice and see her mother’s face and that is absurd. One’s in Farlight and the other is locked down on a prison planet. I can hear my old lieutenant too. And that’s even more ridiculous, because he’s dead.
An army of ejército advance from the treeline. Some have guns. Others carry blades. ‘Run,’ I whisper, but it’s too late.
As a man drags back Shil’s head and a blade glints in the moonlight, a voice that isn’t mine says:
‘No.’
A voice that expects to be obeyed. And that’s good, because it is obeyed. Instead of cutting Shil’s throat, the ejército reverses his dagger and clubs its pommel into the side of her head.
She drops, eyes open. A boot rolls me over and the owner of the voice bends closer. When he spits I grin, because I’m obviously who he thinks I am.
‘Leave him here,’ says Pavel. ‘Let him die slowly.’
‘And her?’
‘We take. His woman for my dead grandson.’
Not my woman, I think. It’s my last thought before the sky floods crimson and the hillside drops away.
Part 2
Chapter 24
THE AIR IS SOUR WITH SMOKE FROM A FIRE THAT HAS BEEN BURNING for longer than the boy has been alive. A buried seam of junk ‘taneously-nited . . . That’s what his sister says. Now it burns so deep that no one can reach the flames to put them out. Supposing anyone could be bothered.
Head down and shoulders forward, the boy runs for the far edge of the rubbish dump, his bare toes biting into ash and tossing up dust behind him. There are silvery thorn vines on the slope ahead. If he can reach those . . .
And then?
Then he can circle round to pick off his tormentors. One or two at a time. Maybe even three or four if he goes after the smaller ones. You have to be fourteen to belong to the Junkyard Rat Gang. That means he can join in two years. If they’ll have him.
Which they won’t.
Primary One is his planet’s largest and oldest dump. It has the richest waste. It also has the Rats, whose control of the dump means they don’t have to pick through rotting meat, discarded clothes and broken glass like the other scavengers in search of precious things. The Rats tax those who work the dump half of everything found. Only those chosen by the Rats can scavenge.
The boy isn’t one of them.
Run, screams a voice in his head. So he runs.
Thorn vines tear his arms and cat-scratch his ankles. They rip his trousers and slice through his tattered shirt to draw blood. His sister Maria will be furious. She likes him to be tidy. Maria looks after the family now. After . . .
Well, everyone knows after what.
Five years back mercenaries chose his village for a base. A brigade from the Légion Etrangère drove them out. It was a hard fight and most of the houses were destroyed in the process. The boy’s parents were taken in for questioning.
His father is still alive. But he doesn’t speak and he doesn’t work. Now and then, the boy finds his father staring at him. As if wondering what this stranger is doing in the house.
‘There he goes,’ shouts a voice.
The boy curses.
Should have been finding somewhere to hide, not worrying what Maria will say. Mind you, that’s easy to say for anyone who hasn’t met her. Maria’s tongue is sharp. And her slap has knocked a sneer from more than one grown man’s face. The boy could flatten her with a single punch back, of course. But he never has, and he never will.
He owes her too much.
‘Go round . . .’ That sounds like Rice.
Dropping into a ditch, the boy comes to his knees behind a twist of vine studded with flat, razor-edged blades. Some vines are silver; this one is purple from whatever is buried beneath its hungry roots.
A number of Rats huddle around Rice at the bottom of the slope. He’s looking up to the right. So that’s obviously where he has sent some troops. The boy could go left, use one of the tracks out of the dump and go home . . . Only Rice will simply come looking for him. Some things in life you just have to face.
That’s what his sister says. So the boy climbs higher, to keep above the scouts. As he climbs, he grabs anything that looks sharp and thrusts it inside his shirt.
A smoking gash marks the highest point of the dump. Hell’s mouth, people call it. No one knows what lies so deep that it can keep burning so far below the rubbish heaped over it. All they know is that smoke from the gash burns your eyes and its ash eats into your skin.
Maybe if he crawls close the Rats will be unwilling to follow? And maybe not, but it’s worth a try. Make nice, Maria says. Ask politely if you can scavenge the dump. Explain . . . Only how can he, when Rice won’t listen to his pleas, and the Rats chase him from the dump every day?
A steel bolt, two stones, a lump of once-molten slag, a bottle made from bluish glass . . . His weapons collection. It is hard to believe someone hasn’t found the bottle before him. Also, he has something flat and green that looks like ceramic but stresses when it bends. The thing has jagged edges. Really sharp. So he decides to throw it first.
He doesn’t have long to wait.
Coughing tells him the scouts are coming. But the boy waits until the first figure is a dark shadow before he throws. Then he stands, twists his body and spins the razor-edged piece of board as hard as he can.
‘Fuck.’
‘Shit, he’s . . .’
‘Get Rice.’
The boy ploughs his way towards their shouts.
A frightened face looks up through drifting smoke, and turns red as the boy drives his heel into a face and steps on it in his hurry to hurt the boy beyond. That face turns red as well. There is a fourth boy, but he’s running downhill, stumbling as he runs.
A metal bolt to the back of his skull drops him.
The boy is stronger than them. He minds pain less. That’s why they hunt him in a pack. Crouching, the boy examines his victims. Two are unconscious. The third stares with frightened eyes, blood bubbling from a rip in his throat. It doesn’t jet like everyone says it should. It bubbles like a damp fart. The boy wonders what to do. Then remembers what Maria always says.
When you don’t know what to do . . . Do nothing.
He leaves his victim to die. It feels good to be out of the smoke. Mind you, it feels even better to have three knives and a little club on a bendy spring that wobbles when you tap it, and hits the middle of your hand with a satisfying thump.
‘Oi, freak . . .‘
It is Rice, with a dozen of his followers. All are armed and most carry knives. They’ve worked out which way he was going to circle. The boy is cross with himself for being so stupid.
‘What have you got there?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Show me, freak.’
‘Show you what?’ says the boy, hiding the little club behind his back.
Rice scowls.
The boy knows everyone else fears the Rats. Only he doesn’t, the boy is not sure why. It would be much easier to be like the others.
‘Hand it over,’ Rice demands.
Glaring around him, the boy spots the Rat who blinks and launches himself at the weakness in the wall. A punch to the face drops the Rat. Someone tries to grab the boy, but he produces his little cosh and breaks the man’s skull.
‘You can’t run,
’ Rice shouts.
Yes, he can. It’s one of the things he does well.
Head down and shoulders forward, the boy heads for the far edge of the dump, knowing he has been here before.
‘Out of the way,’ shouts Rice.
Something hisses past the running boy, and the boy is still grinning when the next dart hits. The first blast of electricity takes him to his knees. Stumbling upright, he manages five steps before an aftershock drops him. Every nerve in his body burns along its entire length. He has pissed himself, then he realizes he’s done worse.
‘Gross,’ Rice says.
A boot catches the boy in the gut, but it’s nothing to the agony in his muscles and the cramp in his limbs. After a while, Rice stops kicking.
‘Fuck,’ says a voice. ‘Where did you get that?’
‘Traded it,’ Rice says proudly.
‘Who with?’
‘None of your business.’
A voice mutters its apologies.
Even in the middle of his pain, the boy has the sense to curl around the spring-loaded club. The longer he can keep Rice from finding out about the Rat with the bubbling throat the better.
‘Hey, freak . . . Can you hear me?’
He says nothing.
‘Of course you can.’ Rice laughs. ‘We don’t want you here,’ he says. ‘Next time, stay away.’
———
He’s forgotten already, the boy realizes. The Rats all have their heads turned to Rice as he outlines the gang’s next job. Smash up a bar, break into a cargo ship, go down to tax the brothels. The list is limited.
Someone will kill Rice eventually.
But it isn’t long since Rice killed the boss before him and the Rats are being careful. The boy wonders if they’d let him be boss if he killed Rice. Even as he thinks it, he knows they wouldn’t.
On a slope stands a hut.
Well, what is left of one. Wreckers have stripped the roof, gutted the inside and cut rusting walls into strips and sold them on. All that remains is a floor with a lip around its edge. The floor is made of something too hard to cut and too heavy to lift. Rain fills this makeshift pool.
Stripping off, the boy splashes himself clean. Having scraped his soiled trousers, he rinses them and tugs them on. The thorn-vine scratches on his ankles are already starting to heal. It’s one of the reasons the Rats call him freak. That, and the shape of his skull, which is a little wider than everybody else’s.
It is time to go home now.
As the boy reaches the peak of a trash mound, he sees a high curl of smoke in the distance. This is wrong. Everyone knows smoke comes from the dump. So he looks harder, because his eyes are good, and realizes it’s his village burning.
The Rats are slung along a road below him now. So close, he could hit them with a stone if he threw it hard enough. And soldiers are heading up the road towards the Rats in the opposite direction. The reason the Rats can’t see the soldiers is a bend in the road.
Except the soldiers can obviously see the boy, because a small man points and the man next to him raises a rifle . . .
The small man shakes his head.
They’re wearing camouflage. Sandy uniforms, with grey patches that make them stand out on the dark strip of compacted rubbish that makes up the road from the dump. The boy could warn the Rats. All he has to do is shout, or toss that stone. Or start making his way down the slope, that would get their attention soon enough.
Only why would he bother?
When he can’t find a proper answer, the boy asks himself the question he always asks when he can’t find an answer. What would Maria want him to do? Only the smoke rising from his village says that what his sister wants probably doesn’t matter much any more.
As the Rats near the bend, the small man nods to the man beside him who says something to someone else. The man he talks to drops to his knees and sights along a scope above a barrel. His weapon is longer than those of the others.
His first shot takes Rice through the head.
Brains and bits of bone spray out as a passing slug sucks sticky matter and splashes it onto the face of a girl behind. The boy sees it happen, although he knows that has to be impossible.
Rice dies still holding his stun gun.
The girl falls still trying to wipe jelly from her face. After that, everything happens too fast for the boy to follow. Although the result is never in doubt. Smoke from the gunfire drifts uphill, adding its acid stink to the smell of the dump. When it clears the boy can see clearly what has happened. All the Rats lie dead and one of the soldiers is taking the stun gun from Rice’s hand.
A trick, the boy realizes. The machine probably told them exactly where Rice was.
When someone shouts, the boy looks up. It takes him a couple of seconds to realize the soldier is shouting at him. Instead of hiding, he stands. His sister is dead, his village is burnt, and the soldiers are back.
Doesn’t much matter what happens now.
The boy remembers little from the time before Maria became his sister. He only knows it wasn’t good. She found him, she took him in and she fed him. All he had to do in return was obey her rules. Don’t lie. Keep your promises.
They weren’t even that difficult.
A dozen rifles track him down the slope. When the boy reaches the road, one of the soldiers gestures him closer. The man has blue eyes and sandy hair and smells of alcohol. As the man steps forward, the boy notices he is swaying.
‘You’re drunk.’ The boy says it without thinking.
Behind the man, someone snorts.
‘Yeah,’ the man says bitterly. ‘Some of us have consciences to anaesthetize.’ Pulling a silver flask from his pocket, he flips its lid with a practised flick of his thumb and swallows a large gulp. As an afterthought, he wipes the top and offers the flask to the boy. ‘Want some?’
‘It’s OK.’ The boy looks puzzled. ‘What’s a conscience?’
‘Something that’s meant to stop me doing this.’ The man takes a pistol from his belt and puts its muzzle to the boy’s head and pulls the trigger. A dry click tells them both that the gun’s misfired.
‘Third-rate technology,’ the man says.
The boy is not sure what it means, so he shrugs. He could try to run, he could try to fight. He is as big as the man shaking the pistol. In fact, he’s bigger than half of the men standing around him. But what’s the point?
‘You killed my sister,’ he says.
The man nods. ‘We killed everyone. That was our job.’
Behind him, the soldier who snorted begins shaking his head. As if knowing this, the man with the pistol turns. ‘You saying it wasn’t?’
‘You’re here to re-establish the rule of law.’
‘By killing people.’
‘That’s not . . .’
‘Yes it is,’ said the man. ‘We get to kill people. You get to watch. That’s what observer status means, doesn’t it? All the excitement, none of the guilt.’
‘ Lieutenant.‘
The one talking wears a flak jacket. He isn’t armed, and something about his voice puzzles the boy. It sounds foreign. Of course, they all sound foreign. But it also sounds . . .
‘You’re—’
Yanking off her helmet, the U/Free shakes out her long fair hair and removes a pair of dark glasses that have been hiding her eyes. ‘Well,’ she asks Lieutenant Bonafonte. ‘Are you going to shoot him or not?’
The lieutenant scowls.
‘You have operational control,’ she reminds him.
‘In that case, no . . . I’m not.’
Paper Osamu nods slowly. ‘Interesting choice,’ she says.
Chapter 25
THE CREEK IS WIDE AND MUDDY AND AN ANCIENT TIDELINE reveals that the sea was once higher. Steps have been cut in the side and jetties lashed together. A system of buckets drags water to a slide at the top. From here, irrigation channels carry it to the fields on Hekati’s valley floor.
Turns out the sea is not salt.
Rusting rings on a sea wall tell of barges long gone. A crumbling maze, mostly no higher than a child’s hip, shows where offices once stood. Stonefoam is cheap and easy to use, but it needs upkeep. It has been centuries since anyone tried to preserve the harbour buildings. Probably decades since there was much left to maintain.
The sea stinks.
It is not sewage, because fewer than three thousand people now occupy a habitat built for several million. And ninety miles of water can cope easily with the effluent from that number. Rancid algae cloud the shallows.
The days are hot and the nights cold on the coast. Both are less extreme, however, than in the mountains. A few boats hug the shore.
They are small, with triangular sails that carry them up the coast during the day. At dusk, they moor for the night if they want to continue. Or turn, and ride the opposite wind down the coast again. Either choice will take you back to where you started.
At the creek’s edge stands a huge cube.
Its sides are unpitted and its edges sharp. If gods built gun emplacements, this is what they’d look like, right down to a long slit that looks north. Twice the height of a human, this slit takes a whole minute to walk from one end to the other; and every year a new gang of boys rappel down from the cube’s roof, only to discover the blackness inside the slit is unbreakable glass.
Those who sail the sea say there’s another cube on the opposite side of Hekati. It’s identical, but for the fact its slit faces south. Both cubes have cities on top, and both cities are reached by mud-brick steps, making them easy to defend.
Enyo, the city here, is roofed with sheet metal. As many as thirty houses are still in use, which means ten are ruined and used only by goats. The streets are narrow, with abrupt turnings. Others lead off the cube’s edge with no warning.
Defence against attack. Although how anyone can mount an attack on a city that drops into the sea on three sides and can only be approached by narrow mud-brick steps on the fourth . . .
Well, it’s obvious.
You scale the sides or use the steps. One will exhaust you, and both will lay you open to bullets and arrows and spears, as well as dropped rocks and pebbles flung from catapults. It is a poor city, Enyo . . . But a safe one.