by David Gunn
A warm wind blows into Colonel Vijay’s face and tugs at the edge of his white shirt. The shirt is clean, the colonel’s hair still wet and he’s been allowed to shave. Only the hollowness around his eyes suggests last night’s sleep was fake.
‘Ready when you are,’ he says.
The Wolf scowls. As we watch, he tests the sword’s balance.
And then, standing firm, his shoulders twisted and his boots glued to the boards, General Luc draws back the blade to take Colonel Vijay’s head from his shoulders.
‘Ready for death?’
Colonel Vijay smiles. ‘I’m a Jaxx,’ he says. ‘An officer in the Death’s Head. What do you think?’
General Luc sighs.
‘I think you’re a fucking little idiot. And every bit as insane as your father. What do I think . . .?’ He grounds the sword. ‘I think this world’s gone to hell in a handcart and you two deserve each other.’
We have the long game.
Things change swiftly after that.
‘I release you from your parole,’ the Wolf tells Colonel Vijay. ‘You can take your chances here or try to break through those.’ He nods towards the falling chutes, then turns to where Aptitude sits, and says, ‘I renounce my claim on his life. You too may stay here, or go . . .’
‘She’s staying. They’re both staying.’
All three turn to look at me.
Of course they are. There’s a war going on out there and I’m not about to lose my major players at this point. General Luc’s halfway down the steps when I block his way.
‘Sven,’ Colonel Vijay says. ‘No.’
‘I want my gun back.’
The Wolf shows yellow teeth. It’s a grin, of sorts.
He tells me it’s an illegal piece of shit, ideally suited for scum like me. Then he orders Sergeant Toro to make sure the Aux are freed and our weapons returned to us.
‘Anything else?’ he asks me.
‘Yes, sir,’ I say. ‘We need to talk.’
His nod takes in the men scattering to their positions. ‘It can wait.’
Chapter 54
AS APTITUDE SCRABBLES PAST, I GRAB HER. SHE FIGHTS UNTIL she realizes who it is and stops, puzzled.
‘Listen,’ I say, pulling her close. ‘I told Vijay you refused General Luc’s offer. It’s what he expected,’ I add, hearing her gasp. ‘He was proud of you.’
‘So he didn’t refuse to let me . . .’
Shit, I hadn’t thought that through at all.
When her gaze flicks over my shoulder, I know who stands there.
Orders might stream from General Luc: belt-feds to be manned, pulse rifles to be broken out and mortars positioned, more anti-aircraft missiles brought from the armoury, but he still watches as Aptitude flings her arms around Colonel Vijay, and buries her face in his shoulder.
Say you rejected Luc’s offer.
I have to mouth it twice before he understands.
The colonel’s nod is slight, and then he’s stroking Aptitude’s hair and whispering things men should only say to women in the darkness of a locked room at night. Except it doesn’t matter and, strangely, I need the Wolf Brigade to see this.
Vijay Jaxx and Aptitude Wildeside.
It’s going to be a long hard fight and a good myth is worth a dozen battalions. A good prophecy is worth ten times that. Get us to believe luck’s your whore and the next battle is half won. Alternatively, this is where we die.
The choice is General Luc’s. He just doesn’t know that yet.
‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘They’ve got tanks.’
‘How the fuck—’
‘Slung under triple-rotor copters, ready manned.’
Shil stands behind him, her eyes on Aptitude. Rachel, however, has eyes only for her rifle. She’s running her fingers down its stock, like she just remembered she wanted to take it to bed. Ajac is keen but unfocused and Iona simply scared.
‘Go sew people up,’ I tell her.
She disappears.
To Rachel, I say, ‘Up on the battlements. Kill the officers first.’ She doesn’t need telling, but saying it gives me a warm feeling inside every time.
Neen gets to look after Debro.
‘Keep her safe.’
He salutes, dips into his jacket and pulls out a small automatic. ‘Ma’am. Do you know how to use one of these?’
Taking the Colt, Debro unlocks it, jacks a round into its breech and returns it to safety, before tucking the side arm into her belt. She should have dropped the clip and counted her rounds, but it’s still impressive.
She’s certainly impressed him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t get your name?’
‘Neen,’ he replies. ‘Sergeant Neen. This is my sister Shil.’
‘Senator Wildeside,’ Shil says.
‘Debro, please.’
It’s a strange meeting, two ex-militia grunts and the head of one of Farlight’s greatest trading families, but no stranger than my first meeting with Debro on a prison shuttle. And we live in a strange galaxy that gets stranger by the day.
Neen leads Debro towards an arch.
He asks something of a Wolf Brigade lieutenant who looks in surprise at Debro, then shrugs and nods to battlements above. The next I see of them, Debro’s added a pulse rifle to her weapons collection and Neen is showing her how to work the pre-charge lever.
‘The mother he never had,’ Shil says bitterly.
‘Thought that was you?’
Tears fill her eyes and I grip her shoulders until the crying is done. It takes three sobs, two breaths and an angry shake of her head before she’s pushing me away. ‘And I still fucking hate you,’ she says.
‘That’s, hate you, sir.’
I take the SIG from Sergeant Toro, whose eyes widen when it purrs obscenely and shivers in my grip.
‘Ignore it,’ I say.
‘That’s not kind,’ the SIG says. It scans what’s going on beyond the walls and burns a third of a battery pack as it works the odds. ‘Particularly,’ it adds, ‘as you’ll all be needing me to save your lives later.’
‘That bad?’
‘Been in worse.’
‘What happened?’ Aptitude asks it.
‘I survived,’ the SIG says cheerfully. ‘Your grandfather didn’t.’
Sergeant Toro tells the colonel that General Luc is on the H-pad, then hesitates on the edge of saying something else and says it anyway. ‘You’ll find he’s otherwise engaged, sir . . .’
Standing right in the middle of the tower, his feet apart and his hands on his hips, General Luc barks out orders, in between scanning the sky and the valley with field-glasses. And, in between barking orders and scanning the sky, he grins. The Wolf was born for this.
‘Sir,’ I say.
‘I’m busy.’ He barely glances in my direction.
‘Won’t make any difference.’
Lowering his binoculars, he says, ‘Didn’t take you for a defeatist.’
‘Didn’t take you for someone to throw his brigade away.’
Snow-blasted grey eyes look at me and it’s like staring into a cold wind as it scrapes over the ice sheet of some prison planet. I have no real idea how old the general is or what he has seen. I don’t doubt this man has eaten human flesh.
So have I.
At least, I think she was human.
Birth separates us. Money separates us. Rank, power, privilege . . . But right now those things don’t matter. In the things that do, we’re alike. As he nods, I know he’s coming to realize that.
‘Sir,’ I say, ‘where are the bombers?’
The first thing you do with a defensive position is pound the fuck out of it. You destroy its occupants’ will to fight. If we’re not being bombed there’s a reason and I know what it is. Leona told me, I was just too stupid to realize.
‘No bombers,’ the Wolf agrees. So I ask his permission to speak freely.
‘Quickly would make more sense.’
Our rockets have destroyed
half a dozen copters at most. As I watch, a goat tit on the walls lets rip, and another four rockets head skywards. An explosion of chaff sends three after false targets and the fourth misses, only to be blinded by more chaff as it loops back for a second run.
If the U/Free haven’t helped the Thomassi with their defences, then their luck is extraordinary. We’re already fighting a losing battle.
Most of the heavy copters are dropping their cargo, and the first new-model Tuskers are grinding their way up the spiral. I can almost taste the static of their engines and the slap of their tracks.
‘Sven,’ my SIG says. ‘You might want—’
‘Down,’ I order. When Aptitude doesn’t move, I grab her wrist and drag her to the deck. Vijay follows after. Not sure where Debro and Neen are, but he’d better be keeping her safe.
‘Stay down,’ I shout, when the colonel raises his head. ‘Sir.’
Banking, one of the combat copters screams over the H-pad, its guns spinning as bullets slap across our deck, churning up bitumen and cutting a mortar man in two. Small-arms fire follows it into the distance, and it chaffs the only rocket to come close.
‘Fuck,’ Aptitude says.
The deck around us is a mess of spilt blood, crouching men and spent cases from the copter’s chain gun.
‘I imagine,’ the SIG says, ‘it’ll be back for more.’
‘Sir,’ I tell General Luc, ‘you must take Colonel Vijay through the gate.’
The Wolf goes utterly still.
‘What gate would that be?’ he asks finally.
His words are so quiet only I can hear them. General Luc’s fingers are round the handle of his pistol, and he’s already flicked safety. Vijay Jaxx fidgets behind me, as the SIG switches clips with an over-loud click.
‘Of course,’ I say, ‘we’ll need the key.’
The general’s eyes widen at that. Slowly, so he can follow my movements, I undo the top two buttons on my shirt and tug free my dog tags.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘From a friend.’
The general laughs sourly. ‘Any other surprises?’
Battle is raging above us. It sounds as if the Wolf Brigade are using up their entire stock of missiles; but sometimes there’s no point saving ammunition for later, and I think we understand this is one of those times.
All the same, raging battle or not, I move slowly as I dip my hand into my jacket pocket and extract the planet buster, its top still open.
‘Fuck,’ General Luc says.
The first time I’ve heard him swear.
‘Sven,’ Colonel Vijay says, ‘you might want to disarm that.’
At his suggestion, I flip the lid shut, twist the enamel ring below the button and stand down the planet buster.
‘I take it you were planning to withdraw your parole?’
When I nod, the Wolf smiles.
Only three people on this planet know how a buster works, and two of them have forgotten, that’s what Leona told me. It involves what General Luc’s hex gate and the U/Free’s ships involve. A folding of space so things that exist on one plane exist on another as well. Or, in the case of my planet buster, stop existing at all.
‘Took it from the Uplifted,’ I say, in answer to his next question.
‘Never reported it?’
‘Kept it as an insurance policy.’
A simplification of the last few months of my life.
‘Sir,’ I say, ‘Paper doesn’t know this exists. So it must be the hex gate that stops them bombing the shit out of us.’
A dozen questions fight for air time. The first out of General Luc’s mouth is, ‘What’s Paper Osamu got to do with this?’
‘We were lovers, sir.’
Behind me, Shil stiffens.
‘You and the U/Free ambassador?’ General Luc’s disbelief is clear.
‘She has odd tastes.’
‘Obviously . . .’
‘Sir, most U/Free don’t know this is happening, because it isn’t officially. The few that do know have it worked out to the last bait and switch and box of glass beads.’
‘Don’t like them, do you?’
‘They think we’re savages.’ I shrug. ‘OK, so they’re right. All the same, this is wrong and those aren’t Thomassi’s forces out there.’
‘Those are X39s. Octovian planes.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Octovian planes carrying Uplifted elite.’
The general considers my words. Then shakes his head so fiercely grey hair swirls around his shoulders. ‘Even Thomassi,’ he says. ‘Even Sebastian Thomassi wouldn’t . . .’
‘You think he was given a choice?’
For the first time since we met, I have the Wolf’s absolute attention. Missiles scream overhead and tanks growl their way round the mountain, while a spew of ‘chutes drop from gliders like lines of falling piss.
None of that matters for him.
‘Why not?’ he demands.
‘Because the U/Free will trick Thomassi as they tricked OctoV. They plan to fold us into the Enlightened, and nothing that Sebastian Thomassi, Colonel Vijay or you can do will change that. Unless we leave here now.’
He shakes his head, less forcefully.
Even if he wasn’t in on the planning – or was, and simply didn’t join in the attack – he knew about Thomassi’s plot to take down General Jaxx. He would know, he tells himself. Surely, he would know if the United Free were behind this?
I see doubt enter his grey eyes.
General Luc blinks. ‘What are you?’
‘Sven Tveskoeg, Lieutenant, Obsidian Cross, second class.’
My salute is abrupt enough to amuse Colonel Nswor and Major Whipple, who hover at the edge of our group.
‘Recently appointed ADC to OctoV’s chosen successor, His Imperial Majesty Vijay Jaxx, Duke of Farlight and new ruler of the Octovian Empire. To who you and your brigade owe loyalty.’
‘Whom,’ Aptitude says.
Her voice is as clear as the note of a bell.
Chapter 55
IT TAKES ALMOST TWO HOURS TO ACTIVATE THE HEX GATE. Well, thirty minutes to activate it and one and a bit hours to rip the gate free from where it’s been for the last five hundred years. Behind the picture of Major Wolf, which hides a bricked-up doorway.
Behind the door is a small room, filled with rubble, then another door, blocked in its turn. Major Wolf, Leona Zabo and their AI, Calinda, really wanted to keep the gate hidden.
‘If you’re lying . . .’
General Luc glares at me.
I nod, to show I understand. He knows I’m not lying.
OctoV, our glorious leader, the never defeated, whose very sweat was perfume to his subjects, told me that Colonel Jaxx was to be the new emperor.
Well, Leona did. But there’s no need to make things more complicated than necessary.
The Wolf has me repeat the bit about OctoV several times.
So I do. OctoV’s last order for the commander of his personal guard was that he transfer the Wolf Brigade’s loyalty to the new emperor.
‘He told you this when?’
‘A while ago,’ I tell General Luc.
I’m not about to say it was in the shadow of an oak tree, with OctoV’s avatar wrapping her arms around my neck. Any more than I am about to say I put a round through her head on his orders. Leona will remain an Aux in General Luc’s memory. If he remembers her at all.
Engineers with angle grinders and hammer drills cut their way through the first door and clear the rubble. Then they attack the final door, coughing at a cloud of dust thrown by burning stone and mortar.
‘Almost there,’ Major Whipple says.
‘Cut carefully,’ General Luc warns him.
The Wolf knows his sappers can cut fast or carefully. Doesn’t stop him demanding they do both. There is a battle raging, he reminds them.
We know. Those barrier gates are slowing the tanks on the spiral. Halting them long enough for anti-tank weapons to rip off their tracks. But th
e last wave of gliders dropped infantry into the high valley just below the castle.
Those men are now climbing towards us.
They wear stealth camouflage, carry pulse rifles and move in tight formation. The only way we can see them is on screen, and we find them using a weird mix of radar, echo location and thermal tracking.
General Luc insists, and he may be right, that they are Octovian. Renegade Death’s Head or elite squads drawn from the cream of Farlight militia. But the metalheads targeting our courtyard are Silver Fist.
They drop, we kill them before they can land, they drop some more. Rachel’s doing her share. To be honest, she’s doing more than her share. The Wolf Brigade snipers aren’t happy with that, which works for me.
Maybe they’ll improve their aim.
‘Faster,’ General Luc barks.
His sappers keep cutting. Occasionally they glance my way, wanting to know why a Death’s Head lieutenant has their general’s attention. Why they’re ripping apart a hidden room while their oppos die on the walls.
When one of them hits metal, everyone freezes. The sapper steps back, as Major Whipple steps forward, then the major steps back for the general.
‘Sir,’ I say. ‘Let me.’
‘At last,’ the SIG says. ‘He does something useful.’
Pistons hiss and braided hoses flex as my fingers grip stone.
Mortar crumbles and a scab of wall breaks free to reveal honeycombed bomb-shielding. Whoever hid the gate wanted it safe from damage.
A second later, the rest of the shielding tears away, and then I’m staggering under its weight, sappers scattering as I turn to rest it against a wall. One of them tries to move it and fails, raising his eyebrows.
Not sure what I expect.
Gold chasing? Weird carving, fist-sized chunks of memory diamond maybe? What I get is a door-sized hexagon on a simple stand. As the Wolf wipes away dust, ceramic gleams like bone beneath.
‘Sir,’ I say. ‘We should get this upstairs.’
He looks round the little room, the rubble of its bricked door and the sheet of bombproofing against the wall. ‘We can fetch Vijay down.’
His lips twist into a smile.
