Day of the Damned

by David Gunn

  ‘Sven.’ She takes my face in her hands. ‘You still don’t get it.’

  ‘What?’ I say crossly. ‘What the fuck don’t I get?’

  ‘Take a good look at me.’

  ‘I did, remember? You’re Serenity.’

  Leona smiles. ‘That’s one of my names,’ she agrees. ‘Major Zabo is another. A few people, like you, know me as Leona. As for the rest.’

  She hesitates.

  ‘It gets complicated. I died, you see. So Calinda held me while my new body grew. Only I liked being inside Calinda, and she liked having an interface. This was before Hekati made the AIs unite. And that was long before Gareisis . . .’

  Oh fuck. ‘You’re . . .’

  ‘No one betrays OctoV while I’m around. Don’t care if it’s pretend. Don’t care if it’s a trick. We’re not signing. Wasn’t that what you told Colonel Vijay on Hekati?’

  She’s got it word for word.

  ‘So you’ll keep this quiet, right?’ Leona says.

  That’s not really a question. Turns out, she’s M’OctoV. Mission eighty-five. Made flesh in the person of Captain Leona Zabo . . .

  ‘But OctoV’s a boy.’

  She sighs. ‘This body’s older,’ she says. ‘Usually I’m younger. Think about it. Curly blond hair, soft hips, puppy fat. Everyone says I look androgynous.’ She stops to explain what that means. ‘It began years ago. The questing prince. Strong but defenceless. Young but timeless. We never bothered to . . .’

  Her words dry up.

  Colonel Vijay looks less pale than he did. His floppy hair is pushed from his eyes. He’s obviously washed out his mouth, because droplets stain his flak jacket. Although now isn’t the time to mention it.

  ‘Sven,’ he says. ‘If I might have a word.’

  As Colonel Vijay nods towards the door, Leona shoots me a look that tells me to keep her secret to myself. OpSec, apparently. So I grin and she scowls, which only makes me grin harder.

  The body of Paper Osamu’s husband lies where we left it, blood glazing the tiles and staining the grouting between them. A greenness tinges his face. Meat rots fast in this heat, unless he was rotten already. Who knows how long he kept that body?

  ‘This savagery is planned,’ Colonel Vijay says. ‘The light tanks on the bridges, the zep with its furies, half the militia out of the city, the rest corrupted. It suggests an intentional strategy.’

  Thought that was obvious.

  Furies don’t appear by accident. They’re illegal, even here. You have to source them, make shipping arrangements, grease palms and fix paperwork.

  ‘The Thomassi,’ he tells me, ‘are behind this.’

  I don’t doubt they’re involved.

  For all I know, they planted stooges in the crowd to say which houses to burn and which shops to loot and which to save. But this is bigger than a bitch fight between the Jaxx and the Thomassi over who gives the best supper parties, or whatever these people really quarrel about.

  And even if you throw in Farlight’s archbishop, the mistrust believers have of doubters and the city’s previous history of rioting, it’s still bigger than that. He must realize it. There’s a crowd in the street below calling for OctoV’s death.

  OctoV’s death.

  They want peace with the Uplifted. Trading rights between planets, votes for all, not just male members of the high clans. The death penalty must be abolished for all but the most major crimes.

  ‘Sir,’ I say. ‘It’s—’

  Colonel Vijay’s not listening.

  ‘The Thomassi insist we killed their senator.’ He sounds outraged at the slur. No, he sounds young and scared and furious. ‘Everyone knows that’s a lie.’

  ‘You did kill their senator.’

  The colonel gapes at me.

  ‘Sir,’ I say, ‘I killed him. That was how I met Aptitude. On her wedding day, as her wedding feast was about to begin. I should have shot her as well. Before the ceremony began—’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because those were your father’s orders.’

  Vijay shuts his eyes.

  ‘Look,’ I say. ‘I don’t do whys. I do whats. So I don’t know why the general had Senator Thomassi killed. Why he chose then to do it. Or why I was chosen to carry it out. But he did and I did and the senator died. Your father declared war on the Thomassi and they fought back. Your father knew something would happen.’

  ‘Not this,’ Colonel Vijay says.

  I wouldn’t put anything past the old bastard. His conscience wasn’t deleted, so much as overwritten to military standards, and the technicians who oversaw it taken out and shot. All the same, I agree.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I doubt he expected this.’

  There is a lot that doesn’t make sense. This control room for a start. Just who are the U/Free controlling? The Thomassi? The archbishop? General Luc’s Wolf Brigade? The city militia? The crowd of believers looting shops below?

  All of them? Or none?

  Now is the time to tell Colonel Vijay about Leona. Something stops me. Partly, that he’s close to cracking and I’m not sure how much more he can handle. But also I can see an advantage in not telling him. Hell, there can’t be that many people in history who’ve had the emperor on tap.

  ‘Sven,’ he says, ‘where are your friends?’

  He means the Aux. ‘Anton’s gone to fetch them, sir.’

  ‘Are we expecting them any time soon?’ His drawl is returning, the smile on his lips is supposed to suggest it’s all so amusing. That’s how I know he thinks this is the end. If not here, then near here. If not now, then soon.

  He’s putting on his armour.

  Colonel Vijay Jaxx, teenage son of General Indigo Jaxx and new Duke of Farlight, although I don’t think he realizes that yet, is getting ready to die. Being Death’s Head, he intends to do it well.

  Me, I intend to live, until that stops being an option.

  Then I’m going to join him.

  Chapter 36

  A KNOCK AT THE DOOR MAKES ME TURN. IT OPENS A LITTLE and Leona sticks her head through the gap. ‘Think you should take a look out the window, sir.’

  The street below is filling with soldiers.

  An armoured car locks off one end. A troop of militia guard the other. On the steps of the hotel a man harangues the crowd. We’re too high to hear what he says but we can hear their responses. As the man finishes, he throws his arms to heaven and soldiers channel the crowd towards the doors of the hotel.

  They can’t know about Morgan’s control room, that’s my first thought. My second concerns us. ‘Leona,’ I say. ‘How do they know we’re here?’

  ‘Someone must have told them, sir . . .’ She glances apologetically at Colonel Vijay. ‘We left some people alive on our way up.’

  Little bitch.

  ‘Had to happen,’ the colonel says, picking up his rifle. ‘Suppose we might as well go meet them.’

  Leona shoots me a glance.

  ‘Sir,’ I say.

  ‘Sven?’

  ‘Leona and I will go. You need to gut those, sir.’

  My gesture takes in a bank of semi AIs, plus some dumb slabs and a couple of stacks I don’t recognize. ‘We’ll need their contents . . .’

  ‘In God’s name, why, Sven?’

  ‘Give us something to negotiate with, sir.’

  Vijay Jaxx looks at me. Something hardens behind his eyes, and he nods to himself. Putting down his rifle, he reaches for a memory crystal. Then he puts down the crystal and walks over to where Morgan lies on the carpet.

  Hooking the toe of his boot under Morgan’s side, Vijay Jaxx rolls the man over and kneels beside his body.

  MilCrypt keys, three of them.

  Ever eaten an octopod? Eight legs, good grilled. To kill it, you turn it inside out and bite out its brains.

  That’s what MilCrypt does to raw data. The crystal slivers twist info on the way in; then twist it back on the way out. One can be broken, supposedly. You can buy failsafe milhackers in every ma
rket. They don’t work, but it doesn’t stop idiots buying them. Two keys, everyone knows two keys can’t be broken.

  As for three . . . Makes me wonder exactly what Morgan wants hidden.

  ‘Buy me time,’ Colonel Vijay says. ‘Then get out of here.’

  ‘Sir . . .’

  ‘That’s an order, Sven.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  On her way out, Leona turns. ‘Sir,’ she says to the colonel. ‘Permission to speak freely.’

  He looks surprised.

  ‘Destroy the cores, sir. When you’re done.’

  ‘The cores?’

  She walks back, stopping by the frame that supports the semi AIs. Flipping down a keyboard, she signals a sequence of hot keys. ‘Starts a Guzzman Swab, sixty-seven overwrites.’

  ‘Sergeant.’

  ‘Take you about ten minutes . . . sir.’

  Not yet sure how I feel about OctoV being a fourteen-year-old girl.

  Except that she’s not, of course. Any more than Gareisis is really a multi-braided metalhead with eyes that glow and a pump station’s worth of pulsing glass hoses going into his gut. They’re manifestations.

  Even I get that.

  Not even manifestations of the whole. I’ve talked to OctoV, a mind bigger than anything I can imagine. With a breadth of knowledge wider than the gaps between the stars. Leona is OctoV’s manifestation.

  An interface.

  Won’t stop those soldiers below our fire escape from hanging her, though.

  The grin she gives me is borderline insane. On the wrong side of that border too. Startling blue eyes catch my gaze and she grins again and shows a mouthful of white teeth. I wonder how I ever mistook her for a militia sergeant.

  ‘Easy mistake to make.’

  ‘Can you be killed?’

  ‘Planning to try?’

  ‘Some of the shit I’ve been through, you deserve it.’

  Leona scowls, climbs in the window after me, and grins again. ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I can be killed.’

  ‘I probably owe you that.’

  ‘Owe me what?’ she says, sounding puzzled.

  ‘A clean death . . . If we get trapped, and we’re going to die or be captured, I’ll kill you myself rather than let them do it.’

  Leona looks at me. ‘Sven,’ she says. ‘You have no idea how reassuring that sounds.’

  Now I know she’s mocking me.

  Flicking a lever on the hunting rifle I took from the merchant’s house, I drop out the clip to check it’s full, tighten the suppressor slightly from habit and snap the clip into place. Franc’s throwing knife is at my hip, a Colt tucked in the back of my belt.

  Checking the list makes me wonder something.

  ‘Banned inside the city limits,’ Leona tells me, before I can ask why we’ve seen so few pulse rifles. The general’s two guards carried them, that’s all.

  ‘And those were illegal,’ she says.

  One floor down, and we see no one in the half light that filters through the stairwell windows. Two floors down, and we can hear the crowd inside the hotel, but they’re still way below us.

  We meet, when we meet, at the top of a wide set of marble stairs five floors below the fire escape we used to reach the penthouse. The ballroom at the foot of the stairs is full of rioters. Not a militia officer, NCO or trooper to be seen.

  Leona winces when a shot flicks past her ear. Not sure why. The bullets you hear are the ones that don’t kill you. They’re already gone.

  ‘Put down that rifle,’ someone shouts.

  Most people hit the floor when I shoot over their heads. A few roll out of sight. They’re the ones I need to deal with.

  ‘You missed,’ says Leona, sounding shocked.

  ‘That was strategy.’

  Leona snorts.

  One of the rollers raises her head. A second later she fires. She’s not Death’s Head but her K19 is, right down to its black barrel and the silvered D-ring on its sling. Looted from Jaxx’s house, most likely. Centring her in the cross-hairs, I put a round through her skull and watch slivers of bone blind the man behind.

  Two for one.

  ‘You’re grinning.’

  I don’t deny it.

  Another couple of rollers die just as fast.

  Showing myself briefly gives the wall behind us battle acne. Someone down there owns an anti-tank rifle, because it punches a round into the wall hard enough to drill marble, destroy both skins of brick, puncture a steel plate and reveal air behind.

  Now that’s the kind of gun I like.

  ‘Eight o’clock,’ Leona says.

  Tell her I know that.

  For his first shot our target stands, resting his rifle on the carved fluting of a marble pillar. For his second, which blasts a bigger hole through the wall behind us, he kneels. The next time he looks round the pillar, he’s at ground level and I slick his brains all over the floor behind him.

  ‘Shouldn’t be that predictable,’ Leona says.

  After that we get silence. So Leona stays down on my orders and I stay silent and it takes longer than it should to occur to the crowd that we’ve stopped firing back.

  Ten minutes since we left Colonel Vijay, and Leona reckons he’ll need twenty to extract the information, run the Guzzman Swab and destroy the data cores. The information bit I get. But running sixty-something overwrites? A couple of rounds a core sounds quicker to me.

  Leona smiles when I say this.

  A voice we haven’t heard before asks questions. Someone answers and the crowd mutter their agreement. Seems the military have arrived.

  ‘They won’t like that,’ Leona says.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Having to involve the militia. Vijay Jaxx should have been killed by the mob before the authorities had time to prevent it.’

  ‘And now the authorities are here?’

  ‘You’ve got it.’

  After more muttering and quiet orders, we hear steps on the ballroom stairs. Gesturing Leona back, I position myself flat to the corridor wall.

  A corporal turns into the corridor and I grab his throat, thumb one side and forefinger the other, closing them on his windpipe. It’s a bad way to die. So I jab my blade under his ribs and lower him to the floor.

  A finger to my lips tells Leona to keep silent.

  She nods, looks from me to the corporal. Occurs to me that for all the planets taken and planets lost, maybe OctoV hasn’t seen death this close for a while. And yes, I know she’s not OctoV. She’s a manifestation.

  She’s real to me.

  When their corporal doesn’t answer a shouted question, his commanding officer shouts again. I expect him to send a sergeant next. Because I’m imagining he’ll work his way up the food chain until we reach someone I’ll enjoy killing . . . Like some spoilt little militia major with a chest full of medals he hasn’t earned.

  But their CO has more sense than that.

  ‘What’s your price?’ he shouts.

  Has to be talking to us.

  ‘Sir?’ Leona says.

  Make him wait or answer now? A quick check of my watch says Colonel Vijay needs another five minutes, which means we need a diversion.

  It comes from somewhere unexpected.

  A stamp of boots says others are joining the fun. Voices rise in the ballroom, then die abruptly as someone fires a side arm. Into the ceiling, from the sound of falling plaster and screams from the crowd.

  ‘Wow,’ says a voice. ‘Vulgar paintings, cheap marble, mirrors to disgrace a brothel. No wonder Sven feels at home.’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘Enough nothing. You should have used incendiary.’

  ‘And destroy this place before we reach the boss?’

  ‘Serve him right.’ That gun’s got all the personality of a hung-over bouncer who’s been dumped by his girl, had the bailiffs repossess his apartment and is having a really bad attack of piles, but I’m still delighted it’s here. If only because I know the voice of the sergeant holdi
ng it.

  Although I still want to know what took him so long.

  ‘Neen,’ I say. ‘Get your arse up here.’

  ‘Right you are, sir.’

  ‘And hurry it up.’

  ‘What about this lot, sir? Kill them?’

  Voices rise and weapons cock. Seems we’re going to have to go to them after all. When Leona and I make the turn in the stairs, our hunting rifle and light machine gun turn a two-way stand-off into something more interesting.

  The first thing I notice about my team, apart from the fact they’re in Death’s Head black, minus their shoulder patches, is that they wear ferox-skull armbands. The second thing is they’re splattered with blood.

  Other people’s . . .

  Guess that answers the question about what took them so long. Been fighting their way through Farlight and stealing armbands from the look of it. The final thing is that Rachel and Emil are missing.

  So is Anton, but I’ll get to that later.

  The militia have clocked their uniforms and armbands. Although it doesn’t impress their CO enough to have him make his troopers lower their weapons. They do, however, part to let Leona and me through.

  ‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘Reporting for duty, sir.’

  He snaps the words out and the Aux stiffen. They’d stand to attention but then they wouldn’t be able to cover the militia with their rifles.

  ‘Good to see you, Sergeant.’

  Neen looks at me, trying to work out if I’m mocking him.

  He’s clutching my SIG-37, and has a Kemzin 19 slung over his back. His sister stands beside him, with a scowl on her face. That’s fine. The day Shil turns up not looking sour is the day I start worrying. Obviously, I don’t need to start yet. Shil takes one look at Leona and scowls harder.

  Standing behind her is a blond boy with broad shoulders and a wide smile. When he sees Leona, his smile gets wider. Ajac is the newest official member of the Aux. A survivor from the death of Hekati. Beside him stands Carl, with staples holding shut a gash in his skull.

  ‘You stole my coat,’ he says. ‘Want it back.’

  It’s the girl on Neen’s other side who really raises my eyebrows. Curves overflowing in all the right places, sweet smile, puzzled eyes. Iona isn’t a member of the Aux at all, which explains why she’s not in uniform.