The Misrule series Box Set

by Andy Graham

  They ran. Burst out of the smoke. Crashed into a couple of Unsung in the next junction. The fight was over in a thumping blur. The Resistance Council hushed and fearful. Vena watching like a fisher gull in an abattoir. “We’re lucky,” Martinez said between gasps for air. “Some of these new recruits—”

  “Worse than useless,” Ray finished.

  “Can you button up your own uniform and salute without help?” Martinez said in the deep, resonant tones of a military-recruitment advert. “Know which end of your dick to hold when you’re pissing? Sign up today. The Unsung need you. Coming soon: The Lunar Legions. In space you can act out your fantasies and sane people never need to hear about it.”

  They hurried on. Ray blooded. Martinez bruised. The others breathless. Stella coaxed her husband forwards, his purple eyes gleaming from between his clenched fingers like a rash. They skidded to a halt at a junction. Ray’s companions’ faces were picked out by the dull glow of the overhead lights. Smoke wreathed through tangled hair as sweat caressed scared faces. Ray twisted his head back to the corner and edged forwards.

  Stop.

  Look.

  Carefully.

  Slowly.

  His heart was thumping so hard his vision blurred. Would this be the moment he’d hear the crack of a bullet, the whistle of air past his face? The thud of it smacking into his body? There was a time he wouldn’t have thought twice, done what had to be done, looked, and even welcomed the pain of the shot. Now, with a kid on the way, a family growing in Brooke’s belly, binding the three of them together in a way no vows or promises or rings or Mennai wedding burns could, that need to do what was right was still there. He just wasn’t sure who he needed to do right by.

  Ray peered round the corner.

  Nothing there.

  No bullet. Not this time.

  They ran, low, stooped in a back-twisting, hamstring-burning position, and turned through more left turns than should be possible without running in spirals. Martinez led them with that hop-skip gait of his; the squeak of the rubber stopper on his spare crutch off-setting the thud of his boot.

  “Here.” Martinez stopped outside a closed door. “The comms room. We can cut through here to the sleeping quarters. Idea was to be able to wake people quickly if need be.” He grinned, ever the optimist. “Some legionnaires also used it to download stuff they shouldn’t really be watching on government channels.”

  “Like what?” Vena asked. She was winded and flushed from the run.

  Martinez’s grin spread. “Men away from home get needs. What kind of thing do you think they were watching? There was a huge black market trade in SWAG in return for time online.”

  “A trade in what?”

  “SWAG. Soaks, weed and geese. Spirits, tobacco and analgesics. Nothing a legionnaire likes more. Some good swag would even get you a box of tissues to go with the screen time . . .”

  The expression on Vena’s face froze the grin off Martinez’s.

  “Ma’am,” he said, with a cough.

  The rest of the group shuffled closer. Seeking safety in the proximity of other humans. Exactly the worst thing to do. “Our instincts make us weaker,” Captain Aalok’s words were clear in Ray’s head. “That’s why an army needs discipline.” Ray hissed at himself. “Focus. No maudlin, no dawdlin’.”

  “It’s got two exits; it can’t be a bottleneck,” Renn said.

  Martinez gave the man a look that was half-annoyance, half-relief at providing a reason to escape Vena’s death glare. “The corridor from the comms room to the dorms is narrow. One man at a time.”

  “Were there ever women on these towers?” Vena asked. The air in the corridor seemed to drop a few degrees.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Martinez said, shuffling his one-and-a-half legs. “One person at a time.”

  “Is this necessary now?” Renn demanded.

  “To stand up for what you believe in?” Vena asked, one eyebrow arching imperiously. “When better than when someone’s threatening to take it away from you?”

  “Martinez?” Ray asked.

  “Fuck. I can’t keep up with all this listening to leaders. The one-person corridor opens into the dorm. The only other exit from the dorm opens onto the main access route to the chopper. That’s thick with Unsung. It’s a risk but it’s the only way to get at the girl.”

  “Emily,” Stella said, “her name’s—”

  “Emily!” Dan shouted at the ceiling. Muscles on his neck locked into rigid lines.

  “Shut him up.”

  “Quiet.”

  “Fool’s going to get us killed.”

  “Emily, Emily, Emily.”

  “Shhh,” Stella crooned. “She’s close. We’re going to get her.” She pulled Dan’s head into her shoulder, whispering in his ear, their sweat mixing together. “We’ll get Em back.”

  “Don’t want to hurt her,” Dan moaned.

  “You won’t,” Stella replied, stroking his head. “You promised, remember? ‘We keep promises,’ that’s what we tell the kids. We’re not going to let her and Jake down, are we?”

  The muttering of the Council died as someone shouted in the distance. “Could be an echo?” Renn said, hopefully.

  “And you could be worth saving,” Vena muttered.

  “We got to go, Ray,” Martinez said, looking back the way they had come, the way the shout had come from.

  Ray grabbed the handle to the comms room. “On my mark.”

  Martinez’s knuckles turned white on his crutch. Stella held her quivering husband tight to her. “Emily! Where’s my daughter? Emily.” Dan. Staccato and feverish.

  “This is too dangerous,” Renn said, glaring at Dan. “We should—” He yelped and spun to face Vena. “You pinched my arse!”

  “You’ve got even less of that than you have backbone,” she said, primly. “If you’re lucky, while the real people are saving the child, maybe you can get online and masturbate some decency into that pathetic brain of yours.”

  The comms room was empty save for the control desk. It was covered in rows of screens that stared at Ray like a dead monster’s eyes. Knobs and dials were coated in dust. A thick-handled lever was rusted shut. Beneath the desk some of the panels had been ripped off to expose a mess of melted wires and cobwebs. Outside the single window, the sky was mercifully quiet. The fisher gulls were busy. An image of the dead legionnaires’ bodies being pecked and fought over rose in Ray’s mind.

  “Emily!” Dan shouted. “Stop it, please. Stella. Help me. It’s in my head. This thing. Clawing and biting. Get it out.” His wife shushed him, tears streaming down her face.

  “Martinez,” Ray said, “watch our rear. The rest of you, stay here.”

  The door to the one-person corridor swung open. Ray wanted it to squeak, to grind, to crunch on its hinges, something to fill the dead silence of the bottleneck beyond, anything other than the thumping in his chest. “The Unsung will hear my heartbeat if not my footsteps,” he muttered under his breath.

  Vena, Stella, Dan clustered around the console in the comms room. Dan’s hands were tugging at his hair, his knuckles white. Stella had her fingers interlaced with his, trying to ease the pressure. Whispering to him as he muttered their children’s names over and over like a prayer: “Emily, Jake, Emily, Jake, Emily. Our children, Dan, They’re our children. They need you.”

  Vena’s ice-blue eyes took in everything, a thumb worrying the mole on the tip of her nose. Renn appeared in the doorway behind Ray.

  “What are you doing?” Ray asked.

  The rest of the Council shuffled after him.

  “What are you doing?” Ray hissed.

  “Following.” One said back in a stage whisper that was louder than a shout. Their mismatched clothes stank of sweat and smoke. They looked like they had been modelled on those of the heroes and heroines of the Atomic Warrior Skeleton comics Ray had read as a boy. One woman’s bandana had a spray of red dots across it that continued up her face. That, Ray suspected, was a more recent additio
n to her wardrobe, one which was probably still warm to the touch.

  “I told you to stay put,” Ray said.

  “We decided—”

  “You made a decision?”

  Undaunted by, or more probably oblivious to, the sarcasm, Renn replied, “We decided you may need backup. Martinez can watch the comms room.”

  “Just stay out of my way then.”

  Renn stubbed his toe on the floor, and cursed. The noise rattled around the confined space.

  Idiots, Ray thought. How had a bunch of weekend warriors, soaked in the idealism of freedom and drunk on patriotism, survived this long without an ounce of reality to cling to? Even if they got out of this mess alive, the Resistance was finished without Rose’s guiding hands. He reached the door to the dorm. Noises filtered through the door. Faint voices. A nervous chuckle. Cursing.

  The Council, propelled by nervousness and a determination to be useful, bunched up behind Ray. Beyond them, Dan jammed one knuckle into his mouth. The jaw muscles in the side of his face worked feverishly. Ray, mouth dry and palm sweating, took hold of the door handle.

  The noises died. Ray froze.

  The look on Renn’s face said what they were all thinking: The Unsung know we’re here. They— a squeal of a child crying, a bark of laughter, a chorus of men yapping and whooping.

  Dan’s head snapped round. Purple eyes gleaming. Face ravaged with hate.

  “Focus,” the word formed in Ray’s mouth.

  The child squealed again.

  “Fuck focus.” Ray wrenched the door open and burst into the room beyond.

  True fear is the anticipation. True pleasure is the waiting. The event that someone craves or dreads is rarely as good or as bad anyone thinks it will be. The fear that Ray had felt in the corridor, of Emily being hurt, of letting down his team, of losing his own life, dissipated the moment the door slammed open.

  Details were filed in his brain, threats categorised, exits noted, numbers, positioning and weapons clocked. It was not a skill, nor a talent; it was something the 10th Legion were trained to do until it became an obsession.

  “Observation,” Captain Aalok had once said, “preparation, a large dose of luck and COs whose common sense hasn’t been tag-teamed by their pride and their glory gene, is the difference between dead legionnaires and veterans.”

  Ray saw—

  Emily.

  One Unsung patrol made up of—

  Five men.

  One woman.

  The woman dozed on an unmade bed. Rifle propped up beside her. Helmet pulled low over her eyes. One man rocked back on the legs of his chair. Jaw working. Teeth black with tobacco. The others watched, laughing, as they took it in turns to chew on bits of paper and flick them at the little girl. Emily’s face was red, a bruise flowering on one cheek, hair tangled and matted. She was standing on a table in nothing but her knickers. She’d wet herself. The puddle on the table splashed as she twisted and turned to avoid the soggy bits of paper that stuck to her skin. A distant realisation flashed through Ray’s mind: most people didn’t see enough real paper in their life to write their name on, and these bastards were using it to humiliate a kid.

  “Keep still, bitch,” one man yelled.

  “Make her dance.”

  Emily saw Ray first. Her eyes widened, hope cutting through the terror.

  “Shit!” The man on the chair scrabbled for his rifle. The legs gave way and he collapsed onto the floor.

  “What?” Four faces turned. Legionnaire Young had a ghost of a moustache clinging to his top lip that looked as if it would fall off if he sneezed. Legionnaire Younger’s face was twisted by bloodlust. The third man had a tear tattooed under his left eye. The face of the last was ravaged by acne scars.

  Captain Aalok had also said, “Observe. Act. Survive. The order of those things is flexible depending on circumstance.”

  Ray acted.

  His first shot hit the man sitting in the chair. It tore a flap out of the back of his skull. He was limp and forgotten before he hit the floor.

  “Fuck him up!” Young yelled.

  The retort of Ray’s revolver silenced him. Three holes opened in the front of Younger’s chest, fresh heart blood soaking the front of his uniform.

  Then the chaos started.

  Emily squealed, leapt off the table, skidded in the spreading puddle of blood on the floor, and landed hard on her side. The three remaining Unsung men swivelled, fumbling for their weapons. Renn burst through the door. His rifle kicked once. Ray felt the breath of the bullet as it whispered past his ear. It slammed into a mattress above Emily’s head, spraying foam across her body.

  “You’ll hit the girl! Don’t shoot!” Ray yelled.

  “Shoot!” came the echoing cry from the Unsung.

  The legionnaires scrabbled for position. The older two dived for cover. Young brought his rifle to his shoulder. A finger squeezed and the muzzle flared. A harsh retort of bullets striking metal. Flashes of light. A shatter of glass as a lightbulb exploded in a rainbow of colours. A surge of bodies knocked Ray sideways. He heard a grunt, a thud, and the keening wail of disbelief from the freshly bereaved. He leapt forwards. Slid across the table that separated him from the Unsung, grabbed a chair and slammed it into the shooter’s head. As the man fell, Ray pivoted and stabbed the chair into the face of the tear-tattooed man. He howled and collapsed to his knees, hands clutching at the chair leg that was rammed into his eye socket. He’d tattooed his knuckles, too, the observant part of Ray noted, clumsy blue letters that spelt out “Mum” and “Dead”.

  “Stop!” A woman’s voice cut through the haze. The legionnaire who had been dozing on the bed was on her feet. Her helmet was tipped back, one hand wrapped in a knot of tangled blonde hair. She pulled the kicking Emily close and pushed the tip of her knife into the girl’s throat.

  “Stop or I slit her throat.”

  Observe. Act. Survive. Ray had missed the obvious threat.

  “Toss your weapon away,” the woman shouted. The two surviving Unsung men came back into view, flanking the woman holding Emily. Young, back on his feet, licked his lips. Colour slowly returned to the face of the acne-scarred one. Ray threw his revolver onto a bunk bed. This one was made. Sheets pulled tight at the corners in precise angles. “Thought the 10th Legion were better than this,” the woman said. “Thought an ex-Riverman such as yourself would have had a half-workable plan.”

  “Thought the Unsung were above threatening little girls.”

  The woman shrugged. The blade was cutting a white line into Emily’s throat. “Win at all costs—”

  “—whatever the cost,” Ray finished. “Never sat well with me, that one.”

  “That’s why you just lost.” She nodded over his shoulder.

  Two of the Council members were kneeling on the floor. A bloody handprint was smudged across the face of one; the other’s lips moved silently. Between them lay Renn. As Ray watched, the man’s chest staggered to a halt. “Is he dead?” whispered one of his colleagues. The answer was drowned by a commotion in the narrow corridor: strangled voices, shushing noises, tears and snarls.

  “How many more you got back there?” the woman asked.

  “Would you believe me if I said a good dozen? All heavily armed, experienced and disciplined?”

  “Maybe.” She grinned.

  “OK, there’s a dozen back there.”

  “But then again, maybe not.” Her grin slipped. “Mind you, a bit of discipline or experience to balance out the thuggish bloodlust wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it, boys?”

  A frown crossed the faces of her companions. The eyes of one flicked between Ray and Emily.

  “Now tell your dozen to make their way in here slowly. No need to remind you not to try anything, is there?” She twisted her wrist so the point of the blade rested on the hollow behind Emily’s collarbone, just a few layers of skin separated steel and lung.

  “She’s just a girl, let her go,” Ray said. “Take me. I’m the one the VP w
ants.”

  “Predictable and boring. If I’ve got the girl, I’ve already got you. Thought you’d be able to work that out.”

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Don’t be so fucking naive. It’s my job. ’Course I got to do this. This is how I feed my family. This is how we keep the country safe. This is how things work. This is what I do. Thought your time in the legions would have hammered that into that thick-but-noble skull of yours.”

  The door behind her edged open. Three more Unsung crept into the room, one after the other. From the way they held themselves, the streak of inexperience that was rife in the 13th was lacking in these men.

  The legionnaires spread out in a fan.

  One patrol.

  Five men.

  One woman.

  All Unsung.

  Through the narrow glass windows that ran along one wall, the sunlight glittered on the sea. White-tipped waves burst out of the green-black depths beneath only to disappear back into the murk. One solitary fisher gull wheeled in the distance, dancing with the air in arcs that cut the distant line of the horizon into shreds.

  “Call it in,” the woman said, over the sound of Emily crying.

  “Tried,” one responded, eyes fixed on Ray. “Radio’s dead. Shit gear’s older than these rust-dump towers. We sent a runner to the chopper.”

  The sweeping arcs of the fisher gull over the horizon were longer, hypnotic, distracting. The rocking of the waves calmer. The wind twitching at the window was quiet.

  “Send another messenger. These towers are off. Should have been pulled down and drowned, them and all the ghosts that stalk them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The legionnaire disappeared. The squeak of his rubber-soled boots on the metal floor fading down the outside corridor.

  Four men.

  One woman.

  Better odds but still bad.

  The woman’s head cocked to one side. “Not planning anything heroic, are you, Franklin?”

  The fisher gull disappeared. The flat expanse of ocean sprawled into the distance, the green-black water leaking across the horizon into the sky.

  “I’m thinking,” Ray said.