by David Gunn
Makes me want to slap him.
We’ve been climbing all day, in serious heat, towards distant mountains. These aren’t the high plains that spread around us in a grey mess of gravel, broken walls and half-fossilized tree stumps, these are the wastes.
The high plains are beyond the pass.
Bocage, not wastes. These were orchards once.
When did I start thinking shit like that? Meeting Leona fucked with my head. Fucked with it far worse than killing her did. Even the SIG-37 knows it. My gun’s keeping quiet around me.
‘Why?’
‘To give you time.’
‘To do what?’
‘If you knew that,’ it says, ‘you wouldn’t need more time, would you?’
Even threatening to toss it under the wheels of my combat trike and keep going doesn’t produce a better answer.
This looks like a retreat. Only General Luc didn’t lose a battle, so it has to be a power play. But surely his position would be stronger if he remained in Farlight, or brought his troops from their barracks into the city centre, rather than moving them out altogether?
We’re back to the long game.
Tapping the brakes on my fat-wheel, I wait for Shil to slide alongside. She’s surprised I’m out of formation. Not least because I told her anyone fucking up formation would be shot.
‘Sir?’ she says.
I open my visor.
Takes her a moment to do the same.
‘Do you play chess?’
She looks at me. Wondering if it’s a trick question.
‘Well, Corporal?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she admits.
‘Good,’ I tell her. ‘I need you to teach me.’ She’s about to flip down her lid when I shake my head. Haven’t finished yet.
‘Sir?’
‘I should warn you. My old lieutenant tried and failed.’
The Aux, and for all I know, the entire Wolf Brigade, hear her swear over the comms channel. Luckily none of them knows what about.
That night Ajac carves me a chess set. He does it swiftly, from chunks of cork hacked from a dead tree on the edge of a village where we stop. When he’s done I don’t recognize any of the pieces.
That doesn’t surprise me.
But Shil doesn’t either. So she gets Ajac to cut her a new set, and tells him how she wants each piece to look. Ajac does it without complaint. His cousin and my sergeant use the diversion to disappear into the darkness. Iona and Neen think Shil won’t notice. They’re wrong. She does.
‘Let it go,’ I tell her.
‘That’s easy for you to say.’ Seeing my scowl, she adds, ‘Sir . . .’
‘No. It’s not. He’s my sergeant. Until she proves herself, she’s just a camp follower who almost got one of my men killed. I don’t carry dead wood on campaign.’
‘Is that what this is, sir?’
Good question.
‘Can’t see what else it is,’ I say finally.
When Neen and Iona return, Shil goes to talk to them. I’m not sure what she says but Iona scurries off. When she comes back it’s with a basin so I can shave. And she offers to mend the rips in my uniform.
God knows where she stole the water.
Shil watches impassively as Iona wastes half our thread tacking a piece of cloth under a hole in my shirt the size of my fist.
‘That’s better,’ Shil says.
Later, Iona brings me food. It’s chilli stew (meat undefined). Biscuits, dry (two). Cheese, processed (not yet mouldy) and chocolate pudding in a tin that heats itself when I rip the lid. For all I know the stew heats the same way, but she prepared that for me.
The pudding tastes like glue.
That’s fine. I like army rations. And I know Colonel Vijay gave us a little talk about eating with the Wolf Brigade. But one thing at a time. We’re still finding his bit about not killing them hard enough.
‘Sir,’ Rachel says.
I look up. So do the others. Rachel’s not given to starting conversations on her own.
‘What does General Luc gain from cutting out the colonel’s heart?’
She has a part-stripped Z93z long-range rifle in front of her. She’s already cleaned its scope and laser sights. And the 8.59-calibre floating barrel lies on an oiled sheet, momentarily forgotten.
As said, snipers are high maintenance.
If a target’s out there Rachel can kill it, moving or not, distance no object. In everything else she’s a mare. A sullen, slightly podgy one who hides behind a curtain of red hair. Lash marks for abandoning her position scar her shoulders. And an Obsidian Cross second class hangs on her dog-tag chain for saving our lives.
Being her, both incidents took place at the same time.
‘Rachel?’
‘You say he plans to marry Aptitude. So why would he kill Colonel Vijay?’
Why would he . . .?
What kind of question is that? This is the man who . . .
It’s a long and bloody list. Dead babies, crucified women, impaled officers, and spies hung with their own guts or returned to their own side with their noses slit, ears cropped and balls stuffed into their mouths and their lips sewn tight.
The general, our general, used cruelty as an art.
The Wolf is cruel by nature. The difference between Generals Jaxx and Luc couldn’t be greater. If the Wolf says he’ll serve Colonel Vijay’s heart on a plate to Aptitude why should I doubt it?
I wouldn’t put it past him to cook it first.
‘Sir,’ Rachel says. ‘Don’t think you’re right.’
The Aux go silent. Neen glances at Shil, then looks away. I could have Rachel whipped for insubordination and that would make twice in a year. As it is, I’m seriously considering having Neen flog Iona for what happened earlier today.
‘Want to tell me why?’
Rachel bites her lip. She’s not good at judging what she’s allowed to say. All she knows is she’s said too much already, and she only knows that because the others have gone silent.
‘Aptitude would hate him if he did.’
I open my mouth to call her a fool and shut it again.
Maybe she’s right? Perhaps General Luc doesn’t want Aptitude the way men usually want women? If he did, he’d simply marry her, rape her and burn Wildeside down around her head if she dared whine.
Have to say, that’s what I thought he had in mind.
‘Shil. What do you think?’
She hesitates. Makes me wonder if Rachel’s mentioned this before.
‘Well?’
‘It’s a good threat, sir. But I’m not sure he’ll go through with it. Not unless the colonel refuses to give Aptitude up. The Wolf might want to. But he’ll need things to be right with Aptitude and her parents.’
Shil’s showing a touching faith in the Wolf’s nature.
‘Vijay gives up Aptitude in return for his life?’
She nods.
‘What if Colonel Vijay would rather die?’
From the look on her face, Shil wants to say he won’t be that stupid. Only he will. Vijay Jaxx is dumb enough to die for love.
‘Sir,’ Iona says.
‘What?’
Maybe I say it too roughly, because she bites her lip.
‘It’s just, General Luc reminds me of Milo. You remember . . .’
Yeah, I remember. Although it’s a stretch to compare the head man of a village on a ring world with the commander of one of the most feared regiments ever to exist.
‘They called him the Fox.’
And we call Luc the Wolf. OK, she’s got an animal thing going. All the same . . . I glance round, seeing faces edged by firelight. It should soften our features but all it does is harden them. We’re good, I remind myself. Anybody who survives what we’ve survived has to be good.
‘Where’s this going?’ I ask Iona.
Looking up, she meets my gaze. Her eyes are huge and seem different in the dark. As if an owl watches me through her eye sockets. Static travels my spine and I shiver,
despite myself.
‘He won’t offer Colonel Vijay his life, sir. Not for giving up Aptitude. He’s too cunning. He’ll offer her his life for rejecting him.’
I want to check I understood that.
‘He’ll spare Colonel Vijay? But only if Aptitude renounces him? And agrees to marry General Luc instead?’
All three women nod.
Chapter 46
As the stars get clearer and the sky darker, the night gets colder and colder, until everyone huddles inside their combat jackets or sleeps under the engines of trucks and scout cars that are too cool to make any difference.
The sappers have built slit latrines at the village’s edge. But I’ve told Shil, Rachel and Iona to make their own arrangements and not stray beyond the glow of our fire. No point taking chances after what happened earlier.
General Luc and his staff occupy an inn.
Its main door is bolted against the wind. All of its shutters are closed and locked, but they still bang endlessly, like boys hammering on fences. Noisy, smoky and crowded; I know where I’d rather be.
‘Yeah,’ my gun says. ‘We know. You’d rather be cold.’
I’m sat by myself, watching stars.
The brushwood Neen stole, and the dried dung he had the others collect, has burnt to a white ash that dusts sullen embers like sugar on one of those sticky pastries you can buy in Zabo Square.
‘Behind you,’ the SIG says.
If it was anyone dangerous, it would have warned me before this.
‘What are you thinking?’ asks a voice.
You’d think women would get bored with that question. They never do. At least not the ones I meet. Shil sits herself down uninvited, and puts her back to the wall that’s protecting me from the worst of the wind. Takes me a while to realize she hopes for an answer. I thought she was just making conversation.
‘About the stalls in Zabo Square. The ones that sell pastries.’
She smiles. Not sure why.
‘Can I ask you a question, sir?’
‘You can ask . . .’
Shil hesitates. That’s how I know I’m not going to like it.
‘Were you and Sergeant Leona lovers?’
‘Shil.’
‘Were you, sir?’
She’s waiting for my answer.
First Rachel’s insolence. Now Shil’s question. I’m not sure what’s got into everyone tonight. I could tell her to fuck off, which wouldn’t be the first time. Or I could give her sentry duty for the rest of the night, which would send the same message, but something stops me . . .
‘No,’ I say. ‘We weren’t.’
She closes her eyes. ‘I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse,’ she mutters. I’m not supposed to hear that bit. When I shift to stop her hip pressing against mine, she looks hurt.
‘You cold?’ I ask.
‘Sven-’ Shil catches herself. ‘I mean, sir. What do you think?’
‘Me? I think you probably shouldn’t squat to piss in case your bits stick to the ground.’
Her laugh is rough. ‘Guess you’re never going to change.’
I wasn’t aware I needed to.
‘Shil,’ I say. ‘Listen . . .’
My idea that your first kill is harder than the second, and your second is harder than the third sounds strange when I say it aloud. Particularly when I get to the bit about how it starts getting hard again.
‘What’s that for?’ I ask. She definitely shouldn’t be holding my face in her hands. Her mouth tastes of salt, stew, chocolate pudding and alcohol. When I sit back, she smiles and then sighs.
‘I miss the desert . . .’ Not sure what makes me say it.
The alcohol, probably.
Shil shakes her head. ‘What you miss,’ she says, ‘is the simplicity.’
I stare at her.
‘Sir,’ she adds.
That’s not why I’m staring.
I’m staring because she’s right. And, then again, she’s wrong.
I do miss the silence and the simplicity. Doesn’t mean I want to go back to who I was then or how I was living. I’m just not sure I want to replace it with where I am now. My shock is not that I realize this.
It is understanding I have a choice.
‘Sir,’ Shil says. ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
Her eyes widen. Maybe she expects me to say no.
‘Shil,’ I say, ‘everyone dies. Unless you’re U/Free. And even those bastards must die eventually. That’s why we hope for a better life next time.’
‘You believe that?’
I look at her. ‘You mean some people don’t?’
Her eyes are wet. Usually, where Shil’s concerned, that’s anger. Not this time. ‘Sven,’ she says, ‘I don’t mean in fifteen years, or ten, or five. I don’t even mean next year. I mean, do we die tomorrow? If not tomorrow, next week?’
‘Would it matter?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It would.’
So I wait for her to tell me why.
‘I don’t believe we come back,’ she says. ‘We’re born naked, wet and hungry. Then things get worse. Then it stops.’ She touches the medallion at her neck. I see her fingers make the shape for Legba Uploaded. Her lips move to the familiar words.
‘I try to believe,’ she tells me. ‘God knows.’
That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard. Taking her face between my hands, I turn her so I can see her eyes in the moonlight. They’re huge, and tracks cut the dirt on her cheek. The air is so cold her tears steam as they fall.
‘Believe me,’ I say. ‘This isn’t everything.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because . . .’ How do I explain touching the mind of an AI?
‘They’re machines,’ Shil says.
‘Maybe once. But if Hekati thinks there’s more than this . . .’
‘Machine heaven,’ says Shil sourly, but she’s smiling as she turns her face towards me. Her kiss is clumsy, but enthusiastic. So I drop my fingers from her face and cup the breast barely discernible beneath her uniform. When she shifts, I start to say sorry, but she simply pops open a storm flap at her neck and tugs a zip behind. When my hand still won’t fit, she tugs again.
‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘That’s cold.’
Her singlet is warm under my fingers.
Closing her jacket as best she can, she wraps both arms tight round my neck. Our next kiss is deep. As my fingers grip a breast, she winces. So I stroke my fingers across a nipple instead.
‘Thought you were going to die,’ she says. ‘That night in Ilseville.’
‘So did I.’
The cracked bones mended within a week, and the pain went within a month. All that remains now is scarring to remind me that my heart was once visible through a hole in my chest.
Knife wounds you stitch.
But bullet wounds are different, because stitching those can kill. Some need air and others maggots. So medics pack broken flesh with sterile bandages, if they have any, and hope unpacking them doesn’t finish what the enemy started.
But that wound in Ilseville . . .
Shil tied me to a chair to hold me still while she cut away ruined flesh. Washed the wound with water and vinegar and kept me sedated with brandy. She smiles sourly when I remind her of this.
In the cold of the high plains, with a freezing wind at our backs, and only a broken wall to protect us, our fire burnt down to embers, and the stars clear above us, with the Aux talking in the darkness or sleeping, and five hundred Wolf Brigade camped around us, we unfasten zips, undo buckles and free Velcro straps.
Fuck knows, it’s taken us long enough.
Her body is whipcord thin, her breasts as slight as I remember from seeing her strip once. Give me two twigs and I could beat out a march on her ribs. We’re not naked, because the cold would kill us before we could dress again. Colonel Vijay might consider being found frozen in his lover’s arms romantic, but I’m not the colonel, and Shil is not
my lover; although she opens her thighs readily enough as I slide my hand into her combats.
‘You don’t mind?’ she asks.
Body hair crinkles beneath my fingers. ‘About what?’
‘Oh,’ Shil says. ‘Franc didn’t-’
My other hand stills her lips.
Yes, I know, Franc shaved her whole body with the edge of a knife, every day, and wore her scars like badges of honour. When the U/Free removed her scars, they took away her reason to live. So she died for us. Because dying was the only thing she could do to make sense of being alive.
Shil listens in silence as I say this. Then she reaches up and hooks her fingers around the back of my neck.
We kiss again, because that’s polite.
Kiss first, take the weight on your elbows, make conversation afterwards, and leave the money discreetly on the table before you go. That last bit of my old lieutenant’s rules doesn’t apply, obviously.
At least I hope not.
Rolling Shil to face the wall, I curl myself behind her and reach round to cup my fingers over her breast.
‘Ready?’
She gasps when I enter.
So I pull back. A part of me wants to grip her hips and bury myself. A bigger part knows I should behave.
‘Fuck,’ Shil says at last. ‘I thought she was joking.’
It hadn’t occurred to me Franc talked about us. Not that there was much us where Franc was concerned. The only person she loved was Haze, my intelligence officer. And that was sexless.
We lie still for a few seconds as Shil’s body adjusts, and we feed on each other’s warmth. And then she reaches for my fingers and takes my hand from her breast and pushes it between her legs, locking her thighs tightly.
‘Slowly,’ she whispers.
Sliding myself out, I roll Shil over and kiss her forehead. Reaching up, she grips my neck and kisses my mouth. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was saying goodbye.
‘Whatever happens,’ she says.
‘Whatever happens?’
‘I’ve had you . . .’ She grins. Has to be my expression, because I can’t think what else would make her grin like that. ‘You realize,’ she says, ‘you’re a bastard?’
