Death's head dh-1

by David Gunn

  We’re now halfway through the new truce. Forty-two days of enforced stalemate while trained negotiators shuttle between Colonel Nuevo and the Enlightened general.

  It’s going to fail. Everyone in the bar nods when I tell Neen this. It’s going to fail, because these things always fail. You’d think the U/Free would have learned to stop trying by now. Everyone nods at that, too…

  The final bar is built into the city’s inner walls. You have to know someone in the previous bar to discover that this bar exists, which is fine, because by now I know pretty much everyone in the previous bar. They’re survivors, like me.

  A pimp called Vice-which may or may not be his real name-introduces me to the madam. An old ex-militia sergeant, given to wearing silk dresses and too much rouge.

  Leave your gun at the door, reads a notice. Apparently it was put up as a joke. A lot of strange things go on at Madame Jess’s. There are racks, whips and chains, and a room with a plunge tub so cold it freezes around you if you sit inside it for too long.

  This isn’t surprising, since snow now hides the blackened ruins beyond our windows and helps keep the corpses from stinking. Ice has closed the Ilseville River, and the Silver Fist are using the truce to build better camps and reinforce their positions. Enough of the customers at Madame Jess’s think the U/Free favor the Enlightened for me not to bother to disagree.

  The madam even has a pair of nude contortionists to entertain her customers. I think they’re the two from Hot Bar Wild, but that could just be the alcohol, or maybe nude contortionists are a type. And it’s weird: You always think you want to meet a woman who can get her knees behind her ears, but when you do, it’s like having sex with a sea anemone.

  “Visitors,” announces my gun.

  So I help the contortionist untangle herself and struggle back into my trousers. She leaves with a gold coin and a smile that lasts almost as long as it takes her to reach my door. I don’t know what she says, but Franc is grinning sourly as she comes into my chamber.

  “Nice,” she says, taking a look at the rack and chains. I’m looking for the irony, but she seems to mean it, and that makes me wonder a bit about home life with the Hazes of this world, or her world, or whichever world is appropriate.

  “Drunk as a skunk,” the gun says.

  “Join me,” I suggest.

  Franc shakes her head. “The truce is about to end.”

  It seems I’m a week out, not that it matters. My metabolism means staying drunk takes real effort and sobriety comes all too soon. Only that’s still not quick enough for Franc.

  “You’re needed.”

  “The colonel?”

  She spits with great accuracy, hitting dead center on a floor tile. Her opinion of Colonel Nuevo made clear, she helps me to my feet.

  “There’s a cold tub next door,” says the SIG.

  I go in, trousers and all. I must help somehow, because looking at Franc it doesn’t seem possible she could maneuver me over the edge on her own. The water is freezing, and feels even colder when she ducks my head under and holds me down for a couple of seconds.

  “You stink,” she says.

  “You stink, sir.”

  “Ignore him,” says my gun.

  Haze has locked himself in the cellar with long loops of copper wires nailed to our side of the door. The wire begins and ends at a fat-wheel battery, which sits on bricks below one hinge.

  When Franc finally persuades Haze to release the door, I discover he’s nailed similar loops of wire to the walls on both sides of the stairs. My arm brushes one of the wires, and sparks flare in the blackness. It’s dark, but I don’t need light to know he’s crying.

  I strike a match all the same.

  Hollow eyes stare at me. It’s like looking into the face of death.

  “We need to talk.”

  He shakes his head, closes his eyes. I want to shake Haze or slap him, but that’s just my hangover arriving. Anyway, I’m scared of driving him deeper, and I’ve just realized something else.

  “You’ve lost your ability to read my mind?”

  Whatever he says is below the edge of my hearing, and my hearing is good. He points to a candle, so I light it with my last match. Then he points to a scrap of paper and an old-fashioned pencil. A design for the wires on the wall is scratched on one side. It’s been drawn and redrawn half a dozen times.

  Haze holds out his hand.

  I give him the paper, then the pencil.

  They’re looking for me. His writing is shaky, far worse than the writing next to his drawings of the wires, and that is shaky enough.

  “Who is?”

  Everyone…

  I take a deep breath. This boy saved our lives when he downed a high fighter before it could flame our trenches for a second time. And with that thought I have my answer. “The Enlightened?”

  Yes, writes Haze.

  “In here?” I tap my head.

  He nods, but I already knew the answer.

  “We’re going hunting,” I tell my gun.

  “About time.” The SIG is sulking because I’ve been drunk and it’s been bored, but it forgives me when I let it select its own ammunition.

  “Ceramic hollow point.”

  I load a clip with the right shells.

  “Flechette.”

  The gun doesn’t really like flechette, but we both know they’re useful and anyway the tiny carbon darts take up so little room.

  “Overblast, explosive, incendiary…”

  I alternate the shells in a single clip, four of each, and slam the final clip into the SIG’s handle. And then, wrapping myself in my coat, I sling a pulse rifle across my back, stuff the SIG diabolo into my belt, and check that I’m carrying a dagger, throwing spikes, and my laser blade.

  No one tries to stop me as I make my way across the inner city…My face is known to most Death’s Head officers, and the others take one look at my scowl and decide I must have official business.

  “Sven.” Colonel Nuevo stares at me through the bottom of a glass. “I’ve been wondering where you were.”

  “Sir…”

  We’re in his bunker, because this isn’t an official meeting. So I finally get to see his famous blast walls after all. More blocks of gold than you can imagine. Utterly useless, providing an illusion of protection. We both know that a direct rocket strike would wipe Ilseville Bank off the map, strong room or not.

  “I’ve got to get out.”

  “Haven’t we all.” He smiles. “Not going to happen, though. Is it?”

  “I mean…I’ve got to be allowed into the outer city.”

  The colonel pours himself another glass. On his table are a bottle, a glass, a pistol, and a map of the inner city with dozens of pencil lines dividing it into small squares. It looks like he’s been playing one of those games where you block out every hit and put a cross for every miss. No one can have any doubt about who is winning.

  “Want to know how many buildings we have left?”

  I shake my head.

  “Very wise,” says Colonel Nuevo. “No point depressing yourself. Now tell me why I should give you permission to leave.”

  “Don’t want to leave,” I tell him. “Just go into the outer city.”

  “You don’t want to leave?” He shrugs. “You’re weirder than I thought. Everybody else is desperate to get out of here.”

  This is going to be more difficult than I thought.

  “The enemy have food,” I say. “And weapons. Okay, not as many as they’d like, but more than us. I want to hit a couple of their dumps, cause some damage before they have a chance to get stuck into us again. And I’m sick of being cooped up in here. I want to kill some Enlightened.”

  His eyebrows rise.

  “As many Enlightened as I find.” For a second I consider telling the colonel about Haze being NewlyMade, then decide not to complicate the issue.

  “The Silver Fist are preparing an attack,” he says.

  “Soon,” I agree. “While the ice
still means they can cross the river without needing pontoons or bridges.”

  “Did I say that?”

  I shake my head. “Worked it out for myself.”

  Colonel Nuevo raises his glass. “We’ll make a proper officer of you yet.”

  “God forbid.”

  He smiles sourly. “Let’s pretend I didn’t hear that.” Pulling a sheet of paper from a drawer, the colonel hunts for his official seal and finds it where he found the paper. He scrawls his signature across the bottom and seals it.

  “Write your own orders,” he says. “Get killed, see if I care. I can always find another ADC.”

  I salute, smartly enough to be insulting.

  His comments about my parentage, manners, and lack of anything resembling breeding follow me from his bunker, leaving the captain and lieutenant in the next room wondering what is funny enough about this to make me grin.

  By the time night arrives, I’m as sober as the silver moon that hides behind scudding clouds above my head, and my hangover is little more than a faint echo. On the dot of 2100 a dozen mortars arrive from across the river to celebrate the end of the truce, but they explode where mortars have already exploded and the rubble they destroy is worth nothing anyway.

  The streets beyond my house are silent as I stamp my way through freshly fallen snow. A militia patrol catch me in their torches, see my uniform, and apologize. We salute each other and I walk on, moving toward a pump station with a heavy lock on its doors.

  I’ve been watching a sector beyond our wall all evening. The houses are expensive, used by senior Silver Fist and members of the Enlightened. A house two streets back has a three-braid, while a house on a square behind has another. They’ll do for a start.

  According to the map in Colonel Nuevo’s office, a tunnel runs from the pump house to a substation in the outer city. I’m about five minutes away from finding out if that’s true. Slashing away the lock, I take a deep breath and steady myself. When I walk out of the substation only one thing must be on my mind…

  Killing Enlightened, plus anything else that gets in my way.

  Silver Fist engineers have welded a grid across their end of the tunnel, so I wrap fire string around the bars, debate stepping back, and decide a falling grid will make too much noise for me to take the risk.

  Molten metal splashes my face like tears.

  On the other side is a long ladder rising into darkness. It leads where I need it to lead.

  CHAPTER 41

  The streets that the Silver Fist own are as quiet as ours are, equally deserted. I’m tempted just to knock at the first door I reach…Knock at the door, kill whoever answers, and riff this thing from there, but I have no idea how many guards the average three-braid keeps on call.

  So I do it the difficult way.

  A pipe runs up the front of the house. My Death’s Head uniform is black, it’s nighttime, and few lights show in the outer city. Even the campfires across the river are fewer than last week, but the silver moon insists on slipping from behind its clouds, and I find myself frozen beside a second-floor window as a five-man patrol passes underneath.

  No one looks up.

  Sliding my dagger between the window and frame, I catch the lock and hear it break with a slight crack. The room is dark, and I’m almost inside when I see a middle-aged woman alone in bed. She sits up and opens her mouth, but closes it again when I put a finger to my lips. It’s probably my gun that concentrates her mind so quickly.

  We’re lit by moonlight.

  “Shut it,” says the SIG.

  She does.

  If there’s a discarded uniform on the floor then she’s dead anyway. But it’s okay: A dress hangs over a chair in one corner. The dress is expensive but filthy, the shoes worn at the heel and trodden down at the back.

  “Ilsevillect?”

  She nods, begins gabbling at me in Ishvelict, so I put my finger to my lips again, switch to common tongue, and tell her to keep quiet, go back to sleep, and tell no one she was awake when I came through.

  “They’ll kill you,” I tell her.

  “And if they don’t,” says the gun. “We will.”

  The look on her face says she knows that already.

  Outside the door I wait, wondering if she’ll scream. When she doesn’t, I take a peep through the door and find her already feigning sleep, her head buried firmly under the covers.

  The room opposite contains a major, plus a blonde young enough to be daughter to the woman across the landing. They’re asleep in each other’s arms, blankets pulled up tightly.

  “Subsonic ceramic,” suggests the SIG, “quarter charge, hollow point, preset fracture lines.” It’s just showing off.

  The man’s a Silver Fist.

  At least he was.

  My shot passes cleanly through his ear canal, cuts his brain stem, and ricochets off the inside of his skull, splintering into fragments that pulp his cerebellum as surely as if I’d just dropped his brain in a food mixer.

  “Now who’s showing off?” asks the gun.

  The girl will wake to find a dead man in her bed, but at least she’ll wake, and given he’s three times her age and she’s got a split lip I think she’ll cope.

  “Scan warning,” says the gun, and before I can ask Scanned by what? the bloody thing kills its laser sights and turns itself off. So I tuck the SIG diabolo into my belt and talk to myself instead.

  A floor below this I find two guards standing outside an ornate door.

  They die quickly.

  Wiping my dagger, I slide it back into its neoprene sheath and pull out my laser knife, tuning its blade to invisible. It’s a wasted effort, because the three-braid is sitting up in bed and his eyes are fixed firmly on the blade in my hand. Should have known the Enlightened could see across a wider spectrum, just as I should have known who was scanning for weapons.

  “You won’t get away with this,” he says.

  “Want to bet?” says the gun, snapping out of sleep mode. And then to me it says, “More guards heading this way.”

  “He call them?”

  No one’s clear what power braids have. Certainly not on our side, and probably not theirs. The Enlightened have a lot to gain from keeping everyone ignorant.

  The three-braid’s still smiling smugly when he realizes I’m not where I was. That’s because I’m behind him, one hand reaching over his skull to hook my fingers into his nose and yank back his head. He does that flicker thing, but it’s too late. Meat sears as his throat opens, and my blade seals every artery except the last.

  “Steps on the stairs.”

  Another silverhead, junior enough to have only one braid, but still a silverhead…I kill him fast, and then shoot both his NCOs through the head, hearing brains slop against a wall.

  “And again,” says the gun as another two soldiers burst into the room.

  It’s chosen subsonic, or maybe I chose that myself. A pull of the trigger and both men go down. I burn out the three-braid’s implant and grind his memories under my heel. That, as much as his death, is what will upset everyone in the morning.

  Shutting the door behind me, I hesitate.

  A booby trap is what I need.

  Gumming a belt mine to the inside of the door, I set it for two movements and use up the first shutting the door behind me.

  A light shows in a top window.

  Darkness stretches out for five floors beneath. It’s a rich house, almost ornate for this city; built by a foreign fur trader, perhaps. People will travel a long way to make themselves rich, even to Ilseville.

  The front door is bolted, the windows have locks, and an alarm system winks from above the rear door. There is undoubtedly an alarm system on the front as well, probably made less obvious by a blanket of snow. Three floors up a window is open and a tiny red dot flares and vanishes, flares and vanishes.

  A soldier is smoking.

  I try to remember what rules the Enlightened have about such things and fail. Most of their rules seem more c
oncerned with what you may or may not eat, wear, or sleep with. All the same, the man obviously doesn’t want to be caught.

  “Flechette or regular?”

  The gun practically snorts. “What do you think?”

  Setting itself for flechette, the gun signals ready and I wait for my victim to take another drag. That tiny red dot makes the perfect target. By my reckoning the shot takes him under an eye socket and blows out the top of his skull, missing his brain stem entirely but trashing his frontal lobe.

  Spiraling like a dying firefly, his cigarette extinguishes itself at my feet.

  The wall is rough, handholds easy to find. All it takes for me to climb in through the window is pushing his body out of my way first.

  A flight of stairs gives way to another, and I climb both in silence. The house is cold, my breath visible in a slash of light coming under one door. It seems I’ve arrived at the right place. Killing the person most likely to raise an alarm is pretty basic really, and in a house full of sleeping people, anyone awake has got to be the obvious target.

  I’m hoping it’s the Enlightened, but it’s a man very like me. Young, but old enough to have seen something of life. A soldier, who reaches automatically for a gun, because instinct is already running ahead of his thoughts. Our eyes meet and outrage flicks to resignation, without passing through fear.

  He dies cleanly, on his feet and facing me.

  Silently I say a prayer for a similar death when my time comes, then touch stone to keep that time away.

  The other guards die less well.

  A shot to the chest, a shot to the throat. A kick to the balls, a twist of someone’s head, and a snap loud enough to wake a silverhead in the room beyond. He gets his shot in first and I find myself hitting a wall, my face flattened by an expensive wall hanging as the blow spins me around. That’s my blood, splatter-patterning antique cloth.

  It’s bad, almost as bad as when the ferox took my arm. Reeling that thought in, I check my status…My prosthetic arm is in place, my legs are unbroken, and my head turns, though it hurts like fuck, which is good, because not hurting at all would be far worse. All that’s wrong is a hole in my chest. He’s missed my heart, but that’s probably not difficult. Half a dozen women will tell you I don’t have one.