Death’s Head

by David Gunn

  A towel is wrapped around his head, and when Haze comes down to breakfast he’s wearing his Death’s Head cap. He eats almost nothing, yet still looks bulkier than he did a week before. Also, he’s sweating.

  “Hangover,” says Franc when she sees me watching.

  Bread, cheese, and a cold chunk of goat are set out on the table. A coffeepot is bubbling over a fire built on what was meant to be an ornamental hearth. The engineers never did get the city’s power back.

  “Eat,” says Maria. “And take food with you.” Her eyes are red; her fingers when she leaves the table brush Neen’s shoulder. When she returns with another jug of coffee, his hand covers hers as she pours him a second cup.

  She follows us to the door to say good-bye.

  “Lock it once we’re gone,” says Shil. She hugs the other girl, which comes as a surprise to all of us.

  Dawn is a slash of pink on the far horizon when we meet Ion at the river gates. The militia are already gathered and shock is their dominant expression, because they’ve been ordered to hold the gates until sunset. Against the enemy, obviously, but also against us, should we try to retreat to the safety of the city.

  Even Ion is rattled.

  “Volunteers only,” I tell him. “Anyone who wants to stay on this side of the gates can. The rest of us hold until sunset or we die.”

  “And anyone left alive gets to go off planet.”

  “The first hundred,” I say.

  He snorts; we both know the final figure is unlikely to be that high. Ion’s bought five hundred men, the ugliest, nastiest collection of moneygrubbing mercenaries you’ve ever seen, and I’m glad to see every one of them. All are armed to the teeth, mostly with pulse rifles. A couple of groups lug belt-feds between them, while a man built like a tank is dragging an eight-barreled rocket launcher by hand.

  A slightly more sophisticated rocket launcher—well, one sophisticated enough to roll along under its own power—is being maneuvered through the gates by two women who seem identical from their cropped hair to their uniforms. When they meet our stare, it’s obvious their faces are identical as well.

  “Twins?” Haze asks Ion.

  “Vals 9 and 11,” he says. “Copies.”

  “Of what?”

  “Each other.” He says it as if it should be obvious.

  “Does the original still exist?” I ask.

  Ion shakes his head.

  “So they’re copies of copies?” says Shil.

  “Aren’t we all,” Ion says, turning his back on us. When I next see him, we’re through the gates and he’s telling Vals 9 and 11 where to place their rocket launcher. The glare all three shoot at Shil is undisguised contempt.

  “Rules differ,” I tell her.

  “Yes,” says Haze. “The U/Free use soldier bots to do this shit.” He nods at a group of militia who are delivering ammunition to the trenches they dug earlier. Mercenaries fight, but they don’t dig ditches.

  “The Free have no army,” I tell him.

  Haze looks like he wants to disagree.

  “Believe me,” I say. “They don’t need one.”

  “Why doesn’t OctoV have machines?” demands Shil.

  “Because he doesn’t have Free technology and people are cheaper.”

  CHAPTER 37

  ON THE one day of the year we could do with fog, sleet, or something to make the landing parties even more miserable, the planet decides to give us blue skies and high-feathered clouds.

  We’re dug into a foxhole. Imagine a broad arrow pointing downward; we’re its point. Ion is ahead of us, to one side; Vals 9 and 11 in a matching foxhole on the other side. We have people dug in right up both sides of the arrowhead, almost to the riverbank.

  Most of us are still alive. A handful are already dead.

  “Incoming,” says my gun.

  The batwings are back, screaming over the marshes, their banshee howls enough to unnerve almost everyone. Me, I’m just irritated.

  “Come on,” says my gun. “Just one.”

  I shake my head. We’re saving ammunition until the Hex-Sevens get closer. The SIG diabolo already knows that.

  “In a minute,” I promise.

  There’s a fallback position behind us. A single trench slashed into the dirt and covered with brush and thermal net to hide it from heat-reading satellites overhead, although I’ve always doubted if such netting actually works.

  “Ready?”

  Everyone gives the affirmative except Haze, who sits hunched over his slab, his rifle untouched beside him.

  “Haze.”

  When he answers, his voice is little more than a fevered whisper. “They’re coming around again.” Sweat is running down his face and every now and then he scratches furiously at his skull.

  “We need to talk,” I say.

  He shakes his head, flinching as I reach for his cap. “Please, sir,” he says, and then, “I’m on your side.”

  “Okay. We’ll talk later.”

  I’m finally beginning to realize the obvious…Haze is a NewlyMade. The virus isn’t catching, but that wouldn’t stop a dozen of the nearest mercenaries from ripping him apart on the spot, just in case. I’m not sure if he’s an odd or an even, a soldier or a thinker. We’ll know that when his scalp sheds its hair and he grows buds for either one or two braids.

  “Pretty please,” says my gun.

  I have Haze check his slab and decide the Hex-Sevens are close enough for me to put the SIG out of its misery.

  “If you must,” I say.

  Less than a second later the SIG’s locked on to a batwing and is torturing it through a fast twist of spirals and crash dives as the tiny plane fights to break free. When the batwing does, the SIG regrips, releases the batwing, and catches it again.

  “This is fun.”

  “Just kill the bloody thing,” I tell the gun, and the batwing blows apart in a fireball that drops sizzling metal into the marsh.

  “That was vicious.”

  “Brutal,” agrees Franc, grinning wildly.

  “And for my next trick,” the gun announces, as a second batwing begins to stagger its way across the sky.

  Vals 9 and 11 are also busy. A flash, a single rocket, and a third batwing hits the dirt with a satisfying crump. Someone jeers. Between us and our five other launchers, we account for eighteen batwings in the next seven minutes, at a cost of thirty-one rockets. We know this because Haze is keeping count, or at least his slab is. We have 172 rockets left.

  “Shil,” I say, “how long have you known about Haze?”

  She goes very still. “You share a room with Franc,” I say. “How can you not know?”

  “Franc told me a while back, sir.”

  “And is Haze really her cousin?”

  Shil wants to lie, but honesty makes her hesitate. It’s Ion who saves her from having to choose. “Incoming,” he warns us.

  A high fighter is rolling itself out of position and looping in a slow circle over the marshes. As we watch, it drops low and fire begins to fall from the rear edge of its wings.

  Vals 9 and 11 are winding a handle on the side of their machine. I understand that mechanical gearing protects rocket launchers from logic bombs, but it also makes aiming dangerously slow. And the plane is using a force field, because every rocket they fire explodes before it gets close.

  “Take it,” I tell the SIG.

  Diodes blaze, flicking through a rapid sequence that slows and then falters. A second attempt fails in the same way.

  “Double fuck,” says my gun, launching a third attempt.

  But it’s too late for that. “Get down.”

  We hit the dirt, followed by most of the troops around us. You can’t face rainfire or try to fight it. You just live through it, if you’re lucky. A dozen people aren’t. The liquid ignites as it hits and eats their uniform to reveal blistering flesh; the flesh strips back to ribs, shoulder bones, and spines, with the bone incinerating itself only seconds later.

  “Fléchette,” I ord
er, and my gun switches clips.

  I shoot the first five human candles I see, nodding as other soldiers begin to do the same. The lucky ones are killed by their companions; the unlucky die screaming as their friends watch in frozen horror. The Uplifted have us killing our own side, a good trick if you can pull it off.

  “What?” I demand.

  Shil looks away.

  “Sir…” Haze wants to say something.

  I nod to a patch of earth next to me.

  “Please,” he says. “Not here.”

  My shrug says it all. Where then? All hell is ready to break loose and this is the spot we have to hold for at least an hour, until we fall back to a trench we need to hold for eight times longer. Neither foxhole nor trench has the slightest real value; their worth in lives is completely arbitrary, utterly artificial.

  Where exactly does he want me to go?

  Maybe over there, sir? says Haze.

  And in my gullet the kyp spasms for the first time in weeks, and I’m on my knees vomiting before I’ve even realized his voice was in my head. Ion is staring across from his foxhole, as are the Vals.

  “Implant malfunction.” My voice is little more than a croak.

  The Vals look sympathetic. “Want us to cut it out?”

  I touch my throat, indicating the kyp’s position. “Better not,” I say, trying for a grin.

  Ion is looking at me strangely. “I scanned you yesterday,” he says. “In the bar. I only got the arm and some weirdshit at the base of your spine.”

  Base of my spine?

  “Soft implant,” I tell him.

  Now I’ve got Franc and the others looking at me weirdly as well. Soft implants are illegal, punishable by death. Real death, the kind that wipes out all copies. Assuming you’re rich enough to make copies in the first place, which I’m not and probably never will be.

  “It’s a long story.”

  And it’s a story I’m not going to tell. The three days in Farlight while the kyp bedded in are still real enough to mess with my dreams.

  You can hear me?

  Yes. I can hear you…

  I can take down that high fighter. The boy is podgy, fevered, and nervous. With his sweat-stained uniform and Death’s Head patch he looks like a kid caught dressing up; the others are starting to look like soldiers.

  You know, he says. Don’t you?

  I nod. How did you get involved with Franc?

  My family owned her. Haze looks embarrassed, and I realize how little I understand about his world. We played together as children…

  All of this is wrong, he adds. The war, people starving, people owning each other or paying others to fight for them. People like you and me. Haze wonders if he can say it, decides he can.

  We shouldn’t exist.

  Oh fuck…

  I have a rebel NewlyMade, camped out in a foxhole a hundred yards from a landing jetty, with a battle about to begin. I wonder to myself how I’d explain it to the Aux if I just shot him here and now.

  You don’t need to, says Haze. Order me, and I’ll do it myself.

  Whose side are you really on?

  His gaze flicks to Franc, Neen, and Shil. There’s no hesitation in his voice whatsoever. Theirs, he says.

  “Go talk to the Vals,” I tell him.

  “About what?” he asks, answering aloud.

  “The high fighters.” I stare pointedly at the slab he carries. “Tell them how your slab can help overcome the shield.”

  Vaulting from the foxhole, Haze sprints across sodden grass, throwing himself into the ditch behind the rocket launcher. Both Vals look surprised.

  “What do you want?”

  Can I really hear their words from where I squat? Or does Val 9’s question filter into my head through the kyp? It’s impossible to say.

  “The high fighter’s going to attack again.”

  “Obviously.”

  “I can stop it.”

  “You can stop it from attacking?”

  Haze shakes his head. “I can unlock the codes,” he says. “Then you can shoot it down.” He’d say more but Val 9’s got him by the throat and she’s looking at Val 11, her eyes calculating the odds of this being likely.

  “You’d better not be lying.”

  “I’m not,” insists Haze.

  He hunkers down with his slab, fingers flicking over the screen as his gaze dances among the high fighter, the rocket launcher in front of him, and the two Vals, who are watching, hard-eyed and suspicious.

  “It’s about to roll,” he says.

  The plane does.

  “Take it before it reaches the river,” says Haze.

  “We decide when to fire.”

  “No.” Haze shakes his head. “You have to take it before it reaches the river. Unless that’s too hard a shot?”

  Both Vals look like they want to get their hands back around his neck. Climbing out of their foxhole, they start to ratchet the wheel, raising the barrels; everyone can see it’s going to be a long shot.

  A second later Haze climbs out of the foxhole after them.

  “What’s he doing?” asks Shil, sounding worried.

  Franc looks at me and smiles strangely. “Helping the Vals.”

  “The Vals take help from no one,” says Ion. So I shrug and point and he shrugs in his turn. Stranger things in love and war, and we’re seeing the side effects of both of those.

  The high fighter is closer now, a delta wing so thin it’s near invisible when seen from the front. A dot and the slash of a line, fire waterfalling behind it.

  “Now,” Haze says. “Now.”

  He’s almost shouting.

  The two Vals hesitate for a second, and then one of them yanks a lever and all eight rockets fire at once. It’s wasteful and they’ve depleted a tenth of their weapons in one go, but it’s probably our best chance of making this work.

  Smoke trails zip toward the incoming plane. It’s right around now our rockets should self-destruct, leaving the high fighter to fly unharmed through smoke and shrapnel. Only our rockets are still closing.

  “Fuck,” says Ion, sounding genuinely impressed.

  “Five, four, three, two, one…” The Vals are counting aloud. When the explosion comes, they hug each other and then punch Haze in the shoulder, which seems to be about as close to affection as either one is likely to get.

  “Watch,” Haze says.

  What’s left of the plane is hurtling toward the jetties on the far side of the river. An area used for mooring if the city gate quays are already jammed with incoming cargo. It hits smack-on, exploding in a ball of flame, then expands into black smoke and an even bigger ball of fire as the fuel it carries ignites.

  Vals 9 and 11, and Haze, are almost blown off their feet.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Ion’s saying it like a mantra. Like he doesn’t believe what just happened, which make two of us, or thirty, or three hundred, or however many there are still crouched in foxholes in front of the city gates. Haze would know, but he’s busy scraping mud from his face and turning bright red as the Vals forget the prejudices of a lifetime and try to hug him…

  “Haze,” I shout. “Get yourself back here.”

  He shoots me a grateful glance.

  We’ve taken down their batwings and we’ve knocked out a high fighter, something that just shouldn’t be possible. In the afterglow I’m pretty sure that Ion, at least, is aware the best has just been.

  All the same, he’s laughing and joking with his men. Passing obscene comments up and down the line, so jokes and insults run from the point of the arrow up one side, back down again, and up the other side. We’re in a gap between the softening-up and the real attack, and a silence settles across the line as everyone finally begins to realize that.

  The earpiece Ion is wearing crackles.

  “Sure,” he says. “Understood.”

  “Outpost?”

  “Yeah. They’ve reached the last bend in the river.” He lowers his voice. “We’re facing Silver Fist.
”

  A lot of mercenaries think the entire Death’s Head should be out here with us, but the Death’s Head are kept for when they’re really needed, and the mercenaries are the ones who’ve been offered passage off planet, should they live. All the same, Silver Fist isn’t good; they’re elite. The Uplift’s answer to OctoV’s Death’s Head, unless it’s the other way around.

  “Belt-feds,” I suggest as the first landing craft comes into sight.

  Ion nods. My suggestions are allowed. Control rests with Ion—that’s been agreed in advance. He expects an argument and is initially suspicious that I agree to his demands. So I explain the obvious. My job is not controlling mercenaries, who already have their own command.

  We’re here to kill enemy officers. It’s that simple.

  “Fire,” shouts Ion.

  A dozen mortars lob their loads toward the river.

  “Again.”

  Water explodes around the first five landers in steady thuds, but nothing we throw at them makes a difference, and the Hex-Seven has been specially adapted for river work.

  One side on each is preparing to drop.

  A junior officer will be first ashore and die within seconds. Somewhere in the craft behind will be an officer the Enlightened are reluctant to lose. And somewhere in the craft behind that will be a collection of majors and colonels and maybe even a general…killing or capturing them is our first duty.

  “Rifles,” I say.

  Midbarreled and easy to carry, but not so lightweight they can’t be steadied, the Ursula 12e fires a single pulse that can melt combat armor and kill a trooper five back from the original victim. The pulse doesn’t spread; it barely dissipates.

  Each weapon costs more than a legion sergeant earns in a year, and we have four of them: one for Franc, Shil, Haze, and Neen. I’ve seen the way those around us look at the guns and have no doubt there’ll be a fight over who gets the weapon if one of us drops.

  I could stop this by tying the guns to our individual DNA, but a dead gun next to a dead soldier is a criminal waste, so I’ve left the codes open. Ion knows this, but only Ion. Genuine friendly-fire incidents are common enough without adding temptation to the mix…

  CHAPTER 38

  WE SLAUGHTER a hundred Silver Fist in a handful of seconds as a landing craft drops its side. Their second lieutenant goes down, his skull half gone. The burn through his heart is Neen, my own shot cuts his brain stem, and he’s technically dead before a mercenary even lobs a mortar, but no one’s arguing.