by David Gunn
‘Sven,’ says my SIG.
‘What?’
‘Think he wants to say something.’
Yeah, I think Pavel wants to say something too. Reaching for the gag, I say, ‘You get one chance. You understand me?’
He nods, thinks about it and nods again.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘The gag comes off. You tell me where Shil is. Anything else and I’m going to hurt your daughter very badly indeed. Understand?’
Again, I get a nod.
‘Good, in that case . . .’
‘Don’t hurt her,’ he says, before the gag is even half free. ‘Please don’t—’ And then he screams in pure frustration, because I’ve turned and Adelpha is backing away from me so fast she trips.
And Milo lunges, then hits the dirt when Neen clubs him; Colonel Vijay stands up from his rock, catches my eye and sits down again; and Pavel says, ‘The nine-braid took her.’ That’s what I need. Not snakehead, not strangers.
The nine-braid.
‘You,’ I say to Adelpha. ‘Cover yourself.’
She drags her dress together by its torn edges, and nods gratefully when Rachel reaches into her pocket for more of that cotton. A single stitch across the neck is enough to give Adelpha back her decency. I don’t doubt that Milo will be unwrapping her later anyway. Once he is over his headache.
‘This nine-braid . . . It was he who gave you those weapons the night we fought?’
Pavel nods. All the argument gone out of him. In a single day, he’s lost his daughter and city and leadership to Milo. We all understand that. Adelpha’s new husband will be caudillo of the O’Cruz ejércitox. I’m part of a bigger nightmare. A particularly nasty part, but just a part all the same.
‘Why did you give him my trooper?’
‘She slapped me.’
I look at Pavel. The man means it.
‘Cut him free,’ I tell Neen.
Pavel’s face says he thinks this is a trick. That I’m freeing him so I can inflict something worse. It’s not a trick.
‘What did you tell the nine-braid about her?’
My guess was right. He didn’t tell the braid Shil was one of mine. There is a simple reason for this. Pavel was meant to kill us all that night. As far as the braid is concerned, Pavel did.
‘So he thinks she’s . . . ?’
‘Difficult,’ says Adelpha. ‘I told her to keep her mouth shut and pretend to be dumb. She’d last longer that way.’
‘Did the braid give your father a present in return?’
Adelpha nods. Walking over to where Pavel is tying the rags of his trousers around his waist, she says, ‘Show them.’
Pavel opens his shirt: just enough to let me see a tiny cylinder, with a flip-up top and a distinctive red ring round its middle. Someone has welded a hoop to the bottom and Pavel is wearing the planet buster upside down on a chain round his neck.
‘Colonel,’ I yell.
‘That’s illegal,’ my gun says. God knows, it should know.
The chain snaps as I yank. Pavel’s looking at Colonel Vijay, and wondering why he’s started scowling. When I offer Colonel Vijay the cylinder, he shakes his head.
‘You know what that is, Sven?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How?’
‘Seen one before.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to know, do I?’
‘No, sir,’ I tell him. ‘Probably not.’
Milo doesn’t know what is going on, nor does Ajac, Iona or Adelpha, but they all catch the glance Haze gives Rachel. It’s appalled, fascinated and only slightly disgusted. I can almost taste Haze’s hunger from here.
‘Sir,’ Haze says. ‘May I talk to Pavel?’
‘Yes,’ answers Colonel Vijay. Maybe he thinks the question is for him.
Wrapping his arm round Pavel’s shoulders, Haze leads him to a rock and stands beside him, looking down over the valley and the city below. Haze seems to be listening. After a while, he talks and then listens again.
‘He’s good at this,’ says Colonel Vijay.
I nod.
According to Pavel, the cylinder is old technology. Very secret. The braids found it in a temple. They felt Pavel should have it because he’s the O’Cruz caudillo. And that’s right. Because they told him it was found in an O’Cruz temple.
‘And what will it do?’ I want to hear this bit for myself.
‘It will make all my enemies disappear.’
‘That’s what the braid said?’
‘Yes,’ Pavel tells me. ‘He promised. As if they never existed.’ He squints around him. ‘Did he lie?’
‘Oh no,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘He didn’t lie.’
‘But I’ve got to wait,’ Pavel says. ‘Because it won’t work yet.’ And then he tells us why. Pavel has been told the cylinder only works under the light of a full moon. Complete shit, obviously. All he need do is flip up its lid, turn a priming ring and put his thumb to the button. We’ll be buggered, he’ll be buggered and so will Hekati.
‘Fifty-three hours,’ says Haze. That’s how long we have until a full moon.
This means the braids, Silver Fist and probably Shil will be elsewhere by then; because they’re sure as fuck not going to be anywhere near here. Because there isn’t going to be any near here.
This is a buster. It folds matter inside itself and posts it somewhere else.
You can destroy whole systems with a buster. And the next thing you know, the U/Free turn up declaring exclusion zones and exiling planets to outer orbits, assuming there are any left. No one stops me when I hang the chain around my neck.
Then I salute Colonel Vijay and tell him we need to talk.
Chapter 36
WE SPEND THE NIGHT IN MILO’S NEW CITY, OUR FIRST NIGHT together in a proper house since landing on Hekati. Milo simply announces he is the new caudillo, Adelpha is now his woman and we are his friends. Everyone nods.
A few men slick him sideways looks, before deciding that challenging the new caudillo is a bad idea. Pavel remains silent during this little speech. Rachel has bandaged his wrist, which I’d forgotten was even cracked, and sewn shut the gash in his head.
As for how things are going to be from now on . . . They’re going to be much as before. Only this time round, Milo’s going to bank the taxes or keep them in a strong box or under his mattress, or whatever these people do.
After Milo takes Adelpha off to bed and Pavel skulks away to a small bar near the walls, we claim our new quarters over the gatehouse. Since we have Milo’s soldiers to keep guard for us, Colonel Vijay says we can have tonight off.
‘You don’t agree?’
I don’t, but he’s the CO round here. Taking Neen to one side, I promise him we’ll get Shil back. My sergeant doesn’t believe me.
He wants to. I can see that in his eyes. Only he doesn’t see how we are going to do it. Nor do I, but that is not the point. Clenching my fist, I touch it to my heart. Neen knows what it means.
We find Shil or die trying.
And I mean it. Whatever else happens I will find his sister for him. It might be Shil’s fault she got captured, but it was my fault too. I should have dealt with what there was between us.
Of course, to do that, I would need to admit there was anything between us. I don’t tell Neen any of this, obviously . . . I’m still shocked at being able to realize it for myself.
The wind has changed and the temperature fallen to way below zero by the time Colonel Vijay and I head out for our talk. I want to talk somewhere private. Bizarrely enough, this means finding somewhere crowded.
Well, that has always worked for me.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asks.
A weird question for a senior officer. Actually, it’s a weird question for a man. Almost anyone who’s ever asked me that was flat on her back and naked, looking for compliments or a little extra coin on top of her price.
‘About this afternoon,’ I tell him.
He looks at me. It’s a quick glance, because t
he wind carries sleet and blows it straight into our faces. Colonel Vijay thinks I’m lost, but he is wrong. I can find a bar blindfolded in the middle of a desert. ‘What about it?’
‘It was clean, sir,’ I tell him. ‘No one died. No one’s getting fucked who doesn’t want to be.’ I’m thinking not just of Adelpha, but also of Rachel, who took one look at a stinking straw-stuffed mattress above the guardhouse and went to find Haze. I guess everyone’s idea of luxury is different. I’ll take clean earth every time. ‘Sir,’ I say to the colonel, ‘I’ve seen cities taken.’
‘This isn’t a city,’ he replies.
‘Seen towns too, and villages . . . Women raped, children beaten, men killed. Seen houses on fire, and animals tortured for the hell of it, when the enemy were all dead and the fury was still in everyone’s eyes.’
‘Sven,’ he says, ‘what are you saying?’
‘That we’re here, sir.’
Banging on a door, I wait. When no one comes, I start banging again.
‘We’re shut.’
‘Not any longer,’ says my SIG.
The room is crowded and smoky, warmed by a fire in the corner. All I want is a cold beer but a blank look greets that demand. There’s wine, brandy and something midway between those two.
‘Shit,’ says Colonel Vijay, looking at a crack in his glass. He blushes. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I know. Staff officers. Don’t even know they’re born.’
Three drinks later, he’s close to being drunk. It doesn’t even seem to be intentional. If it was, he’d be sticking to the brandy, which packs a punch like . . .
‘Milo,’ I say, raising my glass. ‘The new caudillo.’
My accent is terrible, but the crowd around us dutifully raise their glasses. A few minutes later, half of them drift away into the night. Those remaining are the ones who hated Pavel in the first place.
When I tell Colonel Vijay this, he squints at me.
‘I’ll prove it,’ I tell him. Spitting, I say, ‘Pavel, shit.’
A fat man with a broken nose cheers heavily. Wandering over, he half kicks a stool and sits when I nod. He doesn’t say much and I don’t either, and when he’s finished as much of our fortified wine as was left, he shakes both our hands and wanders out into the night, still stinking of goats. A couple of the others get up and amble after him.
‘You were saying . . .’ Colonel Vijay says suddenly.
I was?
‘About cities being taken.’
Yeah, I remember. Although I don’t remember what.
The colonel squints at me through the smoke. He looks like a man about to say something profound, but he just belches and settles back on his stool, watching the few remaining customers drift their way towards the door.
After a minute or two, I realize he’s back to watching me.
‘Sir?’
‘Called up your file before I left Farlight,’ he says. ‘Said you were a killer. No subtlety. I’ll tell them they were wrong. Assuming we ever get home . . .’
He’s drunker than I thought.
It makes a change, because that is usually me missing the table with my elbow and wondering why my glass is empty. And I’m sober, or mostly sober; and Colonel Vijay is really hammered.
‘Carry on,’ he says. ‘With what you were saying earlier.’
Oh, about Milo . . . ‘One man gets hurt,’ I say. ‘This place has a new caudillo. In a village south of Karbonne a hundred died, but they were militia. A few dozen women were raped, the same number of children were killed, but mostly . . .’
‘You were part of that?’
He sees the answer in my scowl. I was in the Legion. What does he think we did?
‘And Ilseville?’ he says.
‘That’s different. A hundred thousand dead. Ghettos burnt. They took the city, we took the city, they took the city. It’s a piece of shit in the middle of nowhere . . . I don’t know why anyone would want it anyway.’
‘Bloody?’
‘Brutal . . .’ My glass is empty so I take his, but that’s also empty. The man behind the bar brings me another bottle. Maybe he sees in my face what will happen if he refuses.
‘Yes,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘I see.’
I’m glad he does, because I sure as fuck don’t. Leaning forward, the colonel fills my glass and then his own. We clink glasses.
‘Death or Glory,’ I say.
We drink.
He refills my glass, and I kill that as well.
Somewhere around now, the bar empties of the last person but the barman and us. Might be because I’m field-stripping the SIG on a table in front of me. I have it on mute, so it doesn’t whine too much when I pull the chip.
‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘How long have you known?’
‘What, sir?’
‘About my mission.’
Sitting back, he squints at me.
‘Village,’ he says. ‘Town, city, country, planet, two planets, ten planets; each capture more bloody than the one before. Yes,’ he says. ‘I see exactly what you’re saying.’
‘Sir?’
‘Must be why you killed the honour guard.’
The colonel nods to himself. ‘Because you knew I wasn’t up to it. I would have tried, you know. Done my best. Of course,’ he says, ‘it probably wouldn’t have been good enough, but . . .’ There are two people in this conversation, and both of them seem to be Colonel Vijay.
‘Perhaps,’ I say, ‘if you start at the beginning?’
The colonel sighs. ‘Who knows,’ he asks, ‘where anything begins?’
All right, so I shouldn’t grin. Only I have had this conversation in a dozen bars in a dozen cities with a dozen different troopers, usually just before they pass out. Just never had it with a Death’s Head colonel while wearing a planet buster round my neck.
I have to remind myself he’s eighteen. Or is it nineteen? If so, we’ve missed his birthday.
‘Sir,’ I say. ‘Would you excuse me?’
‘Use the fire. It’s traditional.’
‘Need some air, sir.’
‘Very well.’
Sleet hammers my face, and the wind rips heat from my hands as I force my fingers down my throat. The vomit melts the ice glaze on the dirt at my feet, and then becomes part of that glaze in its turn. I piss anyway because I’m here; although that is not what brings me outside. I need to be sober.
‘Sir,’ I say, when I return. ‘Let’s keep this simple.’
He laughs.
‘That’s what it says in your file,’ he tells me. ‘Likes to keep it simple. Guess that’s why my father chose you.’
It’s the first time I have heard him call Jaxx that.
‘Plus the fact you killed that colonel.’
‘Nuevo?’
‘You killed Colonel Nuevo? ‘
‘Actually, no . . . Colonel Nuevo killed himself. I killed Captain Mye.’
‘Why?’ Colonel Vijay demands.
‘He intended to surrender.’
Sitting back, the colonel puts a hand to his face. ‘Of course,’ he says. ‘What better reason could anyone have? And I hear you killed another officer for insulting OctoV . . .’
It’s not really a question, and it takes me a moment to work out who he means.
Wiping brandy from the SIG’s chip, I slide it into place and twist the grip, locking it down. The barrel slots next, and then it’s just the pin, the slide, a couple of clips, an underhung rangefinder and the sights.
Forty-five seconds.
I think of telling Colonel Vijay the man in question was an Uplift plant, put into a cell with us to sow discontent. But I have no proof of that. Anyway, Colonel Vijay has made up his own mind about this stuff.
‘Sven,’ he says. ‘If you knew I was here to betray our glorious leader what would you do?’
‘Kill you.’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I imagine you would.’
‘No imagine about it, sir . . .’
‘Well I’m not,’ he tells me. ‘So y
ou can put that knife away.’
What knife? Oh, that one. Slipping it back into my boot, I shrug.
‘So why am I here?’ asks the colonel. ‘I just wish I had a good answer . . . Or a better one, anyway,’ he adds. ‘What do you know about politics?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
Around senior officers, that is the only safe reply. In my case, it’s also true.
‘Probably wise. Officially, we’re here to sign a treaty with the Enlightened. That’s why the U/Free sent us. And that’s why we were met by an Enlightened honour guard. Obviously, you know that already.’
Obviously, I don’t.
Apparently, the U/Free president brokered a treaty. A deal between the Enlightened and the Octovians. It will unite the two empires into one, fold the Death’s Head back into the Silver Fist, from which they originally sprang, and see OctoV and the Uplifted become a single mind.
War will be over. Peace will return.
We will all become Enlightened.
‘OctoV agrees this?’
‘What do you think?’
I think OctoV should order his entire army to fight to the death rather than accept such insanity.
Chapter 37
SITTING NEXT TO A FIRE, FRANC CUTS A SLICE OF BREAD FROM a stale loaf with the longest of her knives and holds it to the flame with another, the shortest. The heat must be unbearable; I guess that’s the point.
Neen has dug into his rucksack for the last of the coffee. A huge square of goat’s cheese sits on a plate. I don’t ask where it came from, but I expect it’s the same place as the slices of salt goat that sit on a plate beside it.
A jug of water occupies the middle of the table. It’s all Colonel Vijay has been drinking. No doubt he’ll drink some more when he gets back from vomiting.
‘Makes a change,’ says the SIG.
‘What does?’
‘Usually,’ it says, ‘that’s you.’
Serves me right for asking. ‘You all right, sir?’
The colonel nods, and takes his place at the table. I want him here, because I want him to listen to what I say. Picking up my mug, I sip my coffee and look slowly round the table. My words are already agreed, but I wait until I have his attention as well. If the Aux are going to die — and chances are they will — then we might as well tell them why.