Death’s Head

by David Gunn

  “You got here fast.”

  The words leave my mouth before I can catch them.

  Paper Osamu smiles. “We have fast ships.”

  What she means is, We have ships that rip holes in space and post themselves through nonexistent slots. Her tone is smug, and her gaze as it scans the deck in front of her is a little too neutral. Any minute now she’s going to offer us all the U/Free equivalent of beads and I’m going to lose my temper.

  This is not a good idea.

  “We’ve got injured,” I say. “Can you spare medical supplies?”

  “Are you asking for help?”

  Something about Paper Osamu’s tone worries me. It’s formal. We’ve entered a negotiation to which only she, and half a trillion others, knows the rules. Unfortunately, we’re not among that number.

  “Yes,” I say, not giving myself a chance to change my mind. “I’m asking for your help.”

  Slots open in the side of her craft and what exits is dust. Only this is dust that moves under its own power and folds itself around my hand and hip before I can object. Others behind me are also enveloped.

  “Stand still,” says Paper Osamu. “You’ll find it makes things easier.”

  We’re being treated to a full-on presentation of U/Free power. That’s when I realize this little scene is being relayed to the Uplifted as well as to Farlight and OctoV’s other cities. At the gates of Ilseville, the Enlightened issued a challenge to the Free while making it sound as if the challenge was to OctoV.

  This is the reply.

  And there’s an elegant symmetry in the U/Free using us to warn the Uplifted, just as the Uplifted used us to challenge the U/Free. Something else about politics falls into place for me: Presentation matters.

  “Thank you,” I say, holding up my newly healed hand. “That’s really very impressive.”

  Paper Osamu’s mouth twitches. “Glad you like it,” she says. “Is there any other way in which we can help?”

  My glance takes in the others, the ruined ship on which we all stand, and the dark swell of a sullen ocean around us. I’ve had enough of this world. My guess is that we all have.

  “If it’s okay with you,” I say, “we’d quite like a lift off planet.”

  CHAPTER 52

  SIX WEEKS pass before we are released by the United Free. At no time do they suggest we are prisoners or hostages of any kind. We’re treated with respect, fed well, given additional medical treatment, and allowed access to a gym and a weight room. Of course we’re also kept in isolation and only allowed to see outsiders when we go for medical treatment or questioning.

  What I do is dangerous, Paper Osamu tells me.

  At first I think she means being a soldier.

  She doesn’t. She means all that glitching dimensions with the kyp, reading events ahead of them happening, and stealing information from all available sources. It’s dangerous, quite possibly illegal. And apparently there’s a really good chance that it will kill me.

  I’m not to do it while I’m aboard her ship.

  All in all I’m interviewed five times. Always by Paper Osamu, although the audience changes. Her ship is somewhere unspecified, but obviously out of our own system.

  Everything is so quiet I begin to believe we’ve slipped through one of those rips in space Haze talks about. When I suggest this to Ms. Osamu, she smiles kindly and talks about self-canceling sound and acoustic engineering. This is the point I decide not to try any of my other theories out on her.

  She gives Haze access to the library.

  After a few days, at his suggestion, I’m also offered access.

  There are ten to the power of twenty-four living stars, beyond counting in any real sense. Dead stars can be the size of small cities or five times bigger than Fort Karbonne’s sun. The energy from a single photon released at the center of a star takes a million years to reach that star’s surface. A number of stars are actually older than the universe, which suggests levels of complexity not yet understood.

  Haze loves it, but then he’s rapidly developing into a two-braid. At the end of the day I’m still a fighting machine. All the same, some of the things I learn are interesting, and a few are even useful.

  Enlightened technology is illegal within areas claimed by the U/Free, but only because the U/Free regard it as crude and unstable. Personality uploading is perfectly legal for U/Free citizens, as is melding with a hive mind, provided such melding is consensual. Bodily augmentation, either viral or surgical, is commonplace. But nonregulated technology is to be regarded as inherently unsafe, hence the ban.

  On instinct, I look up OctoV.

  Renegade hive mind, now self-assimilated, reads the entry. OctoV was Uplifted but is now separate. The Id to their Ego. The entry makes it clear that the Free regard this as a bad thing.

  That evening I’m visited by Paper Osamu. She’s neatly dressed and intensely professional. If I would like to ask for asylum from the Free she feels certain it would be granted.

  I am, apparently, more than I appear. Also, greater than the sum of my parts. Just listening to this adds to my headache. The idea of exile becomes less attractive when I ask about the Aux.

  “Define aux.”

  “My fighting group…Shil, Haze, Neen, Franc, and Rachel. We come as a unit.”

  Something tells me Paper Osamu is wondering whether offering me asylum is a good idea. Not that she need worry; I refuse as soon as I realize asylum means leaving the others behind.

  I ask to see them.

  Ms. Osamu tells me this is not possible.

  All of us, what remains of the army…we’re kept separate by rank, corps, and gender, apparently because Paper Osamu believes our social and sexual models of interpersonal relationships are unfair, and does not wish to implicate herself by encouraging hierarchical models while we remain in her care.

  Haze says she’s a prude, and her announcement that postsexuality is an ideal just means she’s so bored by fucking she doesn’t want anyone else to enjoy themselves, either. The blush as Haze says this tells me things have gone further between him and Rachel than any of us guessed.

  The morning after I’m offered asylum, Paper Osamu wakes me at dawn to tell me to collect my belongings; all of us are being returned to Octovian care. Almost inevitably we’re arrested for treason, desertion, and cowardice the moment we step aboard General Jaxx’s mother ship.

  CHAPTER 53

  MY TRIAL is simple and quick, its verdict obvious. A lieutenant I’ve never met represents me. He barely bothers to see me beforehand.

  A colonel sits behind a desk.

  He’s wearing full uniform, complete with battle ribbons and an Obsidian Cross first class. Braid drips down his chest, because braid always does, and his eyes are as cold as glass. His mouth has a permanent twist, as if he can’t stand the stench of treason in that tiny room.

  I’m the first to be tried.

  The verdict passed on me will apply to all others. This is Death’s Head logic and legal precedent: I led the group that took the silverhead ship.

  The colonel asks if I understand.

  “Yes,” I say. “I understand perfectly.”

  “Read the charge.”

  The charge is simple. Although Octovian soldiers are expected to fight to the last, we obeyed an order from Colonel Nuevo to surrender. Because our duty to OctoV outweighed all other duties of obedience, this was an act of treason.

  “How do you plead?”

  “Guilty.”

  The colonel looks up from his slab, his hand poised over whatever task he was actually doing while the charge was read out. Maybe he was expecting me to plead not guilty.

  “Except Colonel Nuevo didn’t send the order.”

  The officer for my defense leans forward. I will be allowed time to make a brief statement, but that comes later. Until then I’m to keep quiet.

  Only the colonel has other ideas and it’s his courtroom, and he outranks everyone, so when the man decides to question me directly
my defense officer sits back in his own chair and keeps his face carefully neutral.

  “How do you know he didn’t?”

  “Because I was there.”

  The colonel glares at me. “You will address me as sir.”

  “Why?”

  It’s worth saying just to see the man’s face. Although to his credit, the colonel’s lecture on rank, respect, and hierarchy is delivered in a voice that is almost conversational. And when I say interesting… he carefully ignores the fact that I don’t add sir to the end of that, either.

  “And where was this?”

  “Our HQ at Ilseville.”

  The man checks something on his slab. “You were delivering a message?”

  “I was Colonel Nuevo’s ADC.”

  He controls his surprise well. We can go on like this for another five minutes, maybe even half an hour, but I can’t see the point. So I decide to simplify things, because that’s how life should be lived.

  “I sent that order.”

  The courtroom is quiet. I have their total attention. Admittedly, the officer for the prosecution is almost purple with rage, but since the colonel is silent, he makes himself stay silent, too.

  “It was part of a bigger plan.”

  Officers glance at one another. The colonel checks his slab, and then checks it again. Whatever he’s hoping to find isn’t on there.

  “You are under oath,” he reminds me.

  My intention was to plead mercy for the Aux and accept all the responsibility myself. Only that stopped being an option when I discovered a judgment on me was a judgment on them. I need a stronger plan.

  Putting my fist over my heart, in the old legion sign of respect, I sail dangerously close to the truth, with a few vital changes. “Having signed the order paper, Colonel Nuevo shot himself; Captain Mye followed his example…This left us to carry out his original orders.”

  “Us?” the colonel demands.

  “The Aux. Myself, Sergeant Neen, Corporal Shil, and Troopers Rachel and Franc, plus Trooper Maria, who was killed in combat.”

  He checks his slab. “Your group has one other.”

  “Haze,” I say. “Our intelligence officer.”

  The colonel leans forward, interested despite himself. Prejudice is a wonderful thing. He’s got us down as a bunch of militia led by a renegade officer. Only we took down a silverhead ship and called in the U/Free. And militia groups don’t usually worry too much about gathering intelligence.

  “You were a lieutenant,” he says. “Surrounded by majors and captains. Why would you know this plan?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you don’t have sufficient security clearance.”

  Punch the right buttons, use the right words, and even the wildest lies sound real. So real, in fact, that I’m beginning to believe them myself. Something that obviously shows in my face, because the colonel is talking intently to a major who sits just behind him.

  “Who can confirm this?”

  The entire court, all five officers, know what I’m going to say before I even open my mouth. Just as they know the judgment is no longer theirs.

  SERGEANT HITO ARRIVES to escort me from my cell. I’m not sure which irritates me more, trying to work out what to say to General Jaxx or the sergeant’s refusal to answer a single one of my questions.

  In the five minutes it takes us to walk from the cell to the elevator, drop fifteen floors, and make our way to the general’s office, Hito keeps his silence. He doesn’t tell me to shut up or even shake his head; he simply ignores me right up to the point that he knocks on a heavy steel door.

  “Enter…”

  The command is loud enough to be heard clearly in the corridor.

  A major I don’t recognize looks up, skims his gaze across me, and dismisses Sergeant Hito with a nod. The major is young and rather too aware of his own elegance and I see the sergeant’s lips tighten, but he simply salutes, spins on his heel, and leaves me standing in the outer office.

  “What’s that?” demands the major, staring at the silver sack in my hand.

  “A present for the general.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “No you won’t.”

  He stares at me, openmouthed at my insubordination. And finally I begin to enjoy myself for the first time in several days. The problem with being boss is there’s no one above you to insult.

  “Give it to me.”

  I shake my head.

  So he does something very stupid indeed: He draws his gun. Now, I know he’s not going to shoot me because that would make General Jaxx very cross, and even this man isn’t that dumb. And there’s a basic law in combat: Never draw a weapon if you’re not prepared to use it.

  “Hand it over,” he says, holding out his other hand.

  I shake my head again.

  “I’m warning you.”

  Laughing isn’t my best move, nor is punching the man in the stomach when he tries to club me with his pistol, but having hit him once it seems a pity not to finish the move.

  “That will do.” The voice is mild, but only a fool would miss the edge of steel that runs beneath it. “Hitting a senior officer is a serious offense.”

  “Worse than treason?”

  General Jaxx looks at me before turning his attention to the major. “You may go,” he tells the man. As we both watch, the man holsters his gun and limps from the outer office, being careful to salute the general before he leaves.

  “Treason,” says the general, “is a nasty thing.”

  “Yes,” I say. “The worst.”

  “Apparently you killed a Death’s Head captain for treason.”

  Which is how I know he’s questioned at least one other survivor before me.

  “No one’s hurt,” says the general, as if reading my mind. “I talked briefly to one of the militia generals.”

  He smiles, seeing my confusion. “The man disguised himself as a common soldier. Not impressive in my opinion. Although he’s very pleased with himself…Apparently you killed the captain for insulting OctoV. What did the man say?”

  “That our beloved leader is a simple machine.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “Me?” My shrug is careless. “I refuse to believe it.”

  “That he’s a machine?”

  “That there’s anything simple about OctoV.”

  The general laughs and pours himself a glass of whiskey from a decanter on a side table. He doesn’t offer me one. “Go on,” he says.

  “Who knows if OctoV is a machine?” I say, pouring a glass of my own. “Or if it matters? I don’t do big questions. I do small ones.”

  “Such as?”

  “Can we take that hill? Yes, probably…Are the Aux good? Yes, we’re fucking excellent…Did we win at Ilseville? You bet we did…That’s my level. I leave the difficult stuff to people like you.”

  General Jaxx is watching me, very carefully.

  And that’s fine with me, because every minute he’s watching me is a minute he’s not ordering my execution. When he reaches the end of his whiskey, I pour him another, and the fact that he lets me get that close makes me feel a tiny bit more confident. Although it may just be that I’m covered by several hundred hidden weapons systems.

  To check, I put down my own drink and say, “I’m going to put my hand in my jacket pocket. Is that okay?”

  His smile answers my question about those defenses. Part of me wants to scan the room to see what he’s got, but I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. Haze has suggested I limit my use of the kyp, and his reasons are as convincing as Paper Osamu’s. We’re deep enough in the shit as it is.

  Reaching into my jacket, I find what I want. The folded scrap of paper is authentically filthy, crinkled with sweat, rain, and blood. “This is why we surrendered,” I say, putting it on the table between us.

  The general unfolds it carefully, reads it once, and then reads it again. A click of his fingers
brings an orderly running.

  “Verify this,” he says.

  We wait in silence until the corporal returns. He’s looking nervous, which is understandable in the circumstances. “The paper is authentic, the signature genuine. The writing is not Colonel Nuevo’s…”

  “It’s mine.”

  General Jaxx is surprised. “You can write?”

  “My old lieutenant taught me.”

  A wave dismisses the orderly. “So,” says the general. “You expect me to believe that Colonel Nuevo lost Ilseville intentionally…as part of a greater plan. But that you were the only officer he told?”

  I nod.

  The general laughs. “I imagine,” he says, “this is the point I’m meant to ask what’s in your pretty little silver sack.”

  “Except you already know.”

  He shakes his head. “Free technology,” he says. “Beyond our scanners.”

  “Then how do you know it’s not a bomb?”

  General Jaxx looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “Because Paper Osamu gave her word you’d be returned to me unharmed and unarmed. She also gave me a gun, which she insisted belongs to you.”

  “It does.”

  “Yes,” says the general. “That’s what the gun says.”

  He nods at the sack in my hand. “We’ll be taking that bag later, as I’m sure our friend Colonel Madeleine will want to play.” He names the old woman who made me my new arm.

  “How is she?”

  “Same as she’s been for the last two hundred years. Annoying, but brilliant.” Cool eyes examine me. “She likes you. I doubt you realize how unusual that is.”

  And I remember this man is supposed to like me, too. Someone said that months back, Sergeant Hito possibly. “Sir…the Free offered me asylum.”

  I thought that would get his attention.

  “And you refused?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Already knowing the penalty for surrender?” The man’s sigh is deep, almost irritated.

  “I killed a three-braid.”

  Blue eyes turn to watch me.