by David Gunn
‘OK,’ I say, a few minutes later. ‘Now we follow.’
———
As said, I can read the sound of gunfire. This one begins with a burst from Franc. Has to be Franc because she is the one we left standing guard. A clip burns in answer. So the mercenaries have enough ammunition not to worry about wasting it. A second clip burns just as fast. This means they didn’t hit Franc first time round.
I can count every single one in the Aux fire in reply.
‘What about Colonel Vijay?’ says Neen, when I tell him this.
Yeah, that’s true. They might have hit the colonel, but I doubt it. No way are we getting that lucky. Rachel is firing single shots. And probably doing more to pin the enemy down than the rest put together.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s get down there.’
The grass in front of our base is on fire.
Leaves shrivel on bushes, the air stinks from cordite, and whatever animals once made nests in that grass. One mercenary is in the open. The other covers him from behind a low wall. The one in the open uses his rifle to shred stone chippings from the hut.
Anything that wastes their ammunition is fine with me.
The Aux falling back makes sense in one way. The hut has thick walls and narrow windows. Of course, the lack of a door is not great. But, so far, the mercenaries don’t know about that, because they’ve approached from the other side.
In another way, it’s fucking stupid.
The building has no roof. One well-positioned grenade and my troopers are going to be decorating the inside walls. I send Neen round behind a tree. Then, when he is in position, signal him to cover me.
Rising from a crouch, he does.
As Neen opens fire, Franc sticks her own gun around the window and hoses down everything in sight. Her clip burns out in a single blip. Another muzzle appears in the same space and burns out two blips later. So Shil must be changing clips.
How much ammunition do they think they have?
Can’t see Rachel, but that is Rachel for you. She’ll use one bullet to everyone else’s hundred and probably make the only shot that really matters.
And just as I think where’s Haze? a grenade rises from inside, bounces off a strip of roof tiles on its way down and lands at the feet of the nearer mercenary. Hard to know if Haze is an idiot or simply inspired. Perhaps both.
Two paces take me into the open . . .
Caught by the unexpected, the mercenary turns.
So I hit the ground and Haze’s grenade explodes. Needn’t have bothered about hitting the ground. A fair bit of the shrapnel never gets further than my target.
Of course, he’s in armour.
I’m not. All the same, he goes down.
And I scrabble up, praying all the while that Neen is keeping the other mercenary busy. He is. So I stamp on the helmet of the one at my feet, twice. He has a grenade of his own. It seems a pity to waste it.
‘Down,’ I shout, pulling the pin.
Neen ducks behind his tree as I begin to count.
As the other mercenary spins, I reach three and drop into a ditch myself, lobbing the grenade towards him. He tries to kick it away, misses and by then it is too late anyway. The explosion knocks him off his feet and throws him into a wall.
He’s in full armour, obviously. But it’s still enough to stun him. A hollow-point direct into his chest kicks him back when he tries to stand. His armour cracks, but the ceramic holds. We are talking quality stuff.
Gripping his head, I twist until his helmet can go no further. It’s an internal lock, not his spine, that stops me. Although I’m sure I can get round that.
‘Sven,’ says my gun.
‘Now what?’
‘Don’t you even want to know why they’re here?’
‘Not really.’
The SIG-37 sighs. ‘Far be it for me . . .’
———
We go through what is left of their ammunition. Some hollow-point, two clips of full metal, three sticky mines, a couple more grenades, and a sweetly balanced blade. I had been hoping for more.
‘Peel them,’ I tell Neen. ‘Call me when you’re done.’
Chapter 20
HAZE HAS HIS BACK TO THE HUT WALL, A CLOTH WRAPPED round his head. He’s swallowing blood rather than spitting, so he must know how badly those nosebleeds of his irritate me.
‘So,’ I say. ‘How did they find us?’
‘Tracked me,’ says Haze.
‘Did you know?’
‘Of course not, sir. If I’d known . . .’
‘What?’
‘I’d have asked to be left behind.’
There is no answer to that, so I go to see how Neen’s doing with the mercenaries.
The answer to this is not so well. Armour opens from the inside, obviously enough. And our two captives aren’t playing. Franc has their wrists bound behind their backs, their ankles lashed and rags tied over their visors.
‘Sven,’ says Colonel Vijay.
He’s carefully not looking at Franc, who is busy ignoring him. My guess is the colonel panicked again in the first few minutes of the attack. Now he’s wondering how to live it down.
‘Be with you in a moment, sir . . .’
He flushes.
‘Problems?’ I ask Franc.
She grins sourly. ‘Can’t get them open, sir.’
Well, it is a bit like asking a crab to peel itself for dinner.
I can kill one to encourage the other. Waste a clip or two of explosive rounds. Drop large rocks until the internal bruising gets too bad. There are dozens of ways, but sometimes the old ones are best.
‘Make a fire,’ I say. The Aux scatter, looking for kindling.
‘Bigger,’ I tell Shil, when she comes back with twigs.
She scowls at me, but the next time I see her she is dragging a bloody great branch behind her. The time after that, I notice that Franc is cutting the branch into usable lengths. I don’t even want to ask where she got the axe.
Neen prepares a fire of kindling, logs and dry goat droppings.
Breaking apart an incendiary bullet, he extracts the slug from its case and the charge from the slug without losing his fingers. Although we’re all careful to stand back when he tips flakes of thermite, phosphorus and whatever it is onto smouldering leaves.
A minute later, we have our fire.
‘Call me when it’s down to coals.’
‘Yes, sir.’
———
The mercenaries have to realize what’s about to happen. They are struggling hard enough.
‘You ready to open up?’
Two shakes of the head.
So I get Neen to help me roll them onto the glowing coals. Good battle armour can be very good indeed. But no one expects the armour to handle these levels of heat. At least, not for as long as I’m prepared to leave them both broiling.
‘Sven . . .‘
‘Sir?’ My gaze flicks from the fire to Colonel Vijay.
‘Is this necessary?’
There is none of his usual arrogance. It seems to be what it is, a simple question. Looking at him, I spot vomit on his trousers.
‘We could just kill them, sir.’
‘But we should question them first?’
‘I think so, sir.’
Actually, my gun thinks so. But there’s no way I’m going to tell Colonel Vijay that. ‘Sir,’ I say. ‘Can I ask a question in return?’
When he nods, I step away from the fire and he follows. I want to know why we’re here. I want to know why he’s leading a mission that should be mine. I want to know why we’ve gone right round Hekati and found no trace of his fucking U/Free observer. But I ask him something else instead.
That’s called subtlety.
‘How old are you, sir?’
He blushes. ‘Nineteen next week.’
Oh shit.
You don’t get to be a colonel at eighteen without insane amounts of influence behind you. A lieutenant, yes. Maybe a captain by twenty-o
ne, if your family are senators. But a colonel . . .
‘Sir,’ I say. ‘Did you volunteer for this?’
The answer is in his eyes. So I tell Colonel Vijay I have been that kind of volunteer, and move to my next question. The one that’s meant to get me to the questions that matter. Only his answer makes them meaningless.
‘Do I know the general? ‘ His smile is bleak. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘General Jaxx is my father.’
‘Your father volunteered you for this?’
‘Oh, no,’ says Colonel Vijay Jaxx, eyes bleaker still. ‘That was OctoV, our glorious leader himself.’
———
The ceramic skin of the mercenaries’ armour is crazed and metal fittings glow when I get back to the fire. The rags around each helmet and the ropes tying their wrists and ankles together are long since ash.
They are too tired to keep trying to crawl free. The few times they do attempt it, Neen just pushes them back into the fire using a stick.
‘Either of you willing to talk?’
One of them nods.
‘If you’re lying,’ I say, ‘I’ll throw you back.’
I am tempted to leave the other one in there. Only Colonel Vijay is watching and I’m on my best behaviour. So I have Neen drag both from the coals. Filling a water bottle from the spring, he prepares to cool the armour.
‘Don’t . . .‘
It’s the first thing either mercenary has said since being captured. Although what interests me is that the voice is female. More than that, it’s familiar.
‘Unlock,’ I tell her.
She does.
A switch is obviously hit, because a seam runs up her breast-plate. Steam rises as it opens. When Neen reaches down, the woman inside shakes her helmet. I can see the problem. Straps hold her in place.
One after another, these slide back.
Clicking a cuff, the woman shakes a glove free. And reaching up, swears as the skin on her hand sears. It seems a throat guard must fold away before her helmet can lift free from its shoulder guards.
An interesting idea.
A rag hides the woman’s skull. Originally red, it’s now sweat-stained. An implant behind one ear is missing its top. She wears a sodden green singlet. Now here’s someone who didn’t expect to be undressing in public.
As her thigh pieces open, the mercenary rolls to her knees and lets the plate armour fall away to reveal plumbing. One pipe enters her buttocks, another coils beneath her thong.
She rips free the fatter.
Behind her, the second mercenary does the same. They are twins, indistinguishable if you ignore green and blue vests. The same broad shoulders and flat guts, the muscled arms and cropped skulls.
The first one sees me watching and grins sourly. She thinks I’ve never seen someone like her before. It’s a fair assumption. Not many people get to see the Vals and live.
You fight them, you die.
And if you fight alongside the Vals, then you’re definitely going to die. Because the Vals are patron saints of the Last Stand.
‘We’ve met,’ I say.
The nearer Val stares at me. I’m not in any memory bank she’s accessing.
‘And we’re sorry,’ says Neen. ‘About Vals 9 and 11 . . .’
She looks surprised. Why would anyone be sad about a Val dying? It is what they exist to do. A couple of sentences bring her up to speed on Ilseville and what happened to her sisters. Blue singlet gets it immediately. Vals 9 and 11 are dead. We saved their implants; only an explosion destroyed those as well.
‘You were comrades?’ She sounds doubtful.
‘No,’ says a voice behind me. ‘We were friends . . .’ Haze wears a singlet of his own, equally filthy. A rag is wrapped round his head and a water bottle is gripped in his shaking hand. Glancing at me, he takes my silence for permission.
‘Here,’ he says, offering the first Val water. She sips, and then passes it behind her.
After a sip of her own, the second Val passes it back. They finish the flask between them a sip at a time, their actions impressively disciplined. I’ve known heat-struck troopers gulp water fast enough to choke.
‘Friends?’ A corner of green singlet’s mouth twitches.
She knows how absurd a comment that is. The Vals are copies; they protect their own and hunt in pairs. They’ve been chipped, spliced, and augmented to the edge of insanity, and they are proud of it. No one makes friends with a Val. Everyone works at staying alive when they’re around.
‘Yes,’ says Haze.
Slowly the Val reaches out to take the cloth from his head. Then she looks at me, at the colonel behind me and finally at her partner, and then she just looks puzzled. Never seen that in a Val before.
‘Who are you?’
‘Sven,’ I say. ‘Lieutenant Sven Tveskoeg, Death’s Head, Obsidian Cross, second class . . .’
It doesn’t occur to me to lie until afterwards and then it is too late anyway. I get on with introducing the others. ‘This is Colonel Vijay, our commanding officer. Sergeant Neen, Corporal Franc, Troopers Rachel and Shil. Rachel’s our sniper . . . You’ve already met our intelligence officer Haze.’
The Vals are looking at me. So are the Aux, and Colonel Vijay. Our commanding officer? Franc mouths at Shil.
I’ll deal with that later.
‘You’re Uplifted?’ asks green singlet.
‘Death’s Head,’ I reply. ‘And these are the Aux.’ It’s short for auxiliaries. The Vals don’t know about the Death’s Head auxiliaries. That’s OK; I only invented them a few months ago.
‘Let me get this right,’ says the Val. ‘You’re Death’s Head, with a braid for an intelligence officer?’
‘Yeah.’ I nod.
Glancing at the other Val, she shrugs.
‘Got to be true,’ says blue singlet. ‘Too fucking weird not to be.’ As we watch, she slides the tube from under her thong and wipes her fingers on her thigh. ‘Hate these fucking things.’
‘Never tried one.’
Her grin is sour. ‘Wrong plumbing.’
They are Vals 5 and 7. That makes them senior to those in Ilseville. It also makes them good at their job. Vals shift up with battles won. Any Val above 25 you want to handle with care. Above 15, you can make that extreme care.
‘So,’ I say. ‘What are you doing here?’
We look at one another. The Vals are still prisoners. That is, I’m gripping a pistol, Neen hasn’t lowered his rifle and Rachel is holding her Z93z. But we all know the rules have changed. How much, we’ll judge from their answer.
‘We’re after the reward,’ says Val 5.
‘What reward?’ Colonel Vijay asks.
It takes her a second to realize he’s serious. ‘General Jaxx’s son. Dead or alive. A million credits in gold.’
‘Jaxx’s son? ‘ says Neen. ‘Here? ‘
‘We figured that’s why you’re here,’ says one.
A thought occurs to the other. ‘If you’re not here for that?’
‘Then, why are we here?’ I take the initiative because Colonel Vijay is standing as if struck by lightning. ‘A mission,’ I say. ‘For the U/Free.’
‘You serious?’
‘Yeah. I’m serious. And there’s no million-credit reward for what we’re here to do . . .’ More’s the pity, I think. I could buy a hundred Golden Memories with what someone’s willing to pay for Vijay.
The first Val is listening.
‘We’ll ransom you,’ I say. ‘We can negotiate the price in a moment.’
‘Custom sets the price,’ she says, bristling slightly.
I know that. It just didn’t occur to me she would agree. A 5th-and a 7th-level Val come expensive. Of course, our receiving the ransom depends on their getting off Hekati alive.
‘So,’ I say. ‘The price is agreed?’
She pauses, giving the occasion respect. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It is.’
Stepping forward, I offer my hand.
When I look round, Neen has grounded his rifle. C
olonel Vijay is smiling, somewhat grimly. Even the Vals look happier. The rules governing this are covered by contract. Vals 5 and 7 can no longer hunt us. At least, not without warning us that the truce is over first.
We let them go. Then we head out ourselves. Not that I don’t trust them. I just want a couple of mountain ridges between us before nightfall.
Chapter 21
YOU KNOW THAT BIT BELOW THE RIBCAGE ON A WOMAN, ABOVE the navel and under the lowest rib, where the skin of her gut stretches so tight you can see a caged heart beating?
No, I don’t either.
My old lieutenant told me to look for it the day I visited my first brothel. Mind you, I was thirteen and he was always after the impossible.
Franc’s skin is taut, right enough.
Her navel is a tight knot, but her heart is safely back behind her ribs. And she doesn’t have body hair because she scrapes between her thighs, under her arms, and across her skull each morning with a knife — or so Rachel told Haze.
Never seen her do it.
‘Stand still,’ I say.
Pulling a blade from my boot, I check its edge. Sharp enough for our needs.
Twilight is the only time Hekati is bearable. For now, the wind is at Franc’s naked back. Soon, the last of the sun will vanish behind a slope; the wind will switch directions and with it will come the cold.
A moon is already rising.
Of course, the moon doesn’t actually exist. It’s another illusion.
Like the sun setting and the night sky, which is just a pattern of stars reflected through glass. I don’t care how many times Haze tells us. It still looks like the sun, the moon and the stars to me.
‘Sir,’ says Franc. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘About the moon.’
‘Beautiful,’ she says. ‘Isn’t it?’ See, she agrees with me.
Franc and I are up here to have a little discussion. She thinks she is losing her edge in battle. I think she’s as fast and deadly as she ever was. Except once you lose faith in yourself it doesn’t matter what anyone else tells you.
You find it again fast, or you lose it for ever.
Sometimes, of course, it’s not there to start with. Sometimes you only stumble on it later . . .
