Authors: David Gunn
So I push again.
When that doesn’t work, I decide Vijay’s present is broken. I’m heading back to the roof terrace when the handle suddenly drags, and then comes free. A smoking gash scars the stair wall behind me.
A prod at the wall creates a smouldering hole. I make another before deciding Debro won’t thank me for messing with her plaster. But the temptation is strong, and the wooden rail looks old and in need of replacing anyway.
My first blow severs it. My second sends a section clattering down the stairs.
There are three controls on the sabre’s handle.
A silver button turns the blade on. A wheel adjusts for colour and visibility. A smaller wheel below that produces a low humming.
‘You’re grinning,’ Anton says.
Yeah, quite possibly. I have a laser dagger that’s saved my life. But this, I didn’t even know laser blades this big existed. If I’d had one when I met the ferox I’d probably still have both arms.
Anton sees the handle hanging from my belt.
As if by telepathy, Debro looks where he’s looking. Her face drops. ‘That’s your present from Vijay?’
‘Smart, isn’t it?’
‘You realize it’s illegal?’
My grin must widen, because she sighs.
Neither Debro nor Anton is paying attention to Aptitude. She’s standing at the edge of the terrace, blushing deeply, rereading a letter in her hand for what is obviously the fifth or sixth time.
‘Printed on that machine?’ I ask Anton.
‘The envelope certainly was.’
Could be Colonel Vijay’s careful by nature. Could be his father’s spies intercept his messages. General Jaxx is capable of that. There’s another option, of course. The Colonel’s trying to avoid the attention of our glorious leader.
OctoV, the glorious and undefeated.
Makes me wonder why.
That thought vanishes when knocking begins at the front door. Someone wants our attention. Wants it badly, by the sound of it. Anton and I are halfway down the stairs when the knocking is replaced by the sound of a sledgehammer.
Chapter 8
THE MEN CROWDING DEBRO’S STEPS WEAR RAGS. THEY HAVE the faces of those who fight the land for food and lose. Their hair is lank, their scowls weathered to the roughness of new leather. Dirt pocks their skin like powder burn.
I grew up around people like these.
That was on another planet.
General Luc’s scout car is now parked across the square, its gull-wing doors wide open. The Wolf is leaning against the hood, looking amused. He smokes a cigar with a lazy arrogance that probably took years to achieve.
Unless he was born with it.
‘Lock Wildeside down,’ Anton says.
Not sure what took him so long.
As steel bars fall into place behind us, blocking all access to the compound, the man holding the sledgehammer steps back. Maybe he wasn’t expecting someone holding a gun to answer the door.
‘What?’ I demand.
He mutters something.
Just not loud enough to be heard.
So I start shutting the door and his scowl gets darker.
A man raises an ancient rifle. A few brandish cheap cavalry swords, stamped from sheet metal and sharpened on a wheel. Only one man worries me, and even he doesn’t worry me that much. He holds a distress pistol.
When he raises it, I can see the orange point of a flare.
‘Lower your weapon,’ Anton tells him.
The man doesn’t. ‘Give us the heretic.’
‘The what?’
‘We know he’s a doubter.’
It’s a long time since I’ve heard that word in public. I’ve known troopers who believed life was once simpler, that there was only one kind of human. Personally, I believe there are as many types of human as there are star systems.
I’m just not sure why it matters.
‘Who said he was a doubter?’ Anton demands.
‘They did.’ The man jerks his thumb towards the village police, who are watching from a distance. Behind them, the Wolf lights another cigar.
He smiles when he sees me notice.
‘Look . . .’ Anton says.
Wrong approach. He shouldn’t be arguing. He should be telling that man to lower his pistol or d
ie.
Situations like this need to be kept simple.
‘You have to give him up.’
‘Why?’
Gesturing at his companions, the man makes them stand back so we can see the three silent gyrobikes and two dead riders lying in the dirt.
‘See,’ he says. ‘That’s a crime.’
When Anton opens his mouth to reply it occurs to me that it’s time to end this conversation. ‘The messenger didn’t kill them. I did.’
The man looks at me.
‘And I’ll kill you if you don’t lower that pistol.’
‘Dangerous words.’
General Luc is flanked by his ADC and his driver. Both wear full combat gear, with their visors down. Maybe the Wolf thinks he’s bullet-proof. Our eyes lock, and he doesn’t like it when I grin.
Why does he think I do it?
‘So,’ I say. ‘Getting others to do your fighting?’
The Wolf’s face tightens.
As if on cue, two more bikes roll into the dusty square and the crowd decides to fall back some more. Slowly, the riders climb from their bikes. What they don’t do is unholster their shotguns.
That tells me they’re amateurs.
A bunch of dirt farmers wearing what was once uniform.
Don’t get me wrong. Where I came from dirt farmers are aristocracy. And I’ve worn enough rags in my time. I’m just saying I wouldn’t want this lot guarding my back. For a start, their bikes block each other. So it’s impossible for them to move out swiftly.
See what I mean?
Anton’s holding his hunting rifle with one hand. He’s holding it lightly. So lightly it looks as if it might slip from his fingers at any moment.
No one’s fooled.
That rifle is expensive. Made by a famous maker. The Wolf undoubtedly has one like it. He knows who’ll be taking the first bullet.
‘Your call,’ Anton says.
Anton began in the palace guard. He married a senator, one of the richest women in Farlight. She might be a doubter, and he might be in exile and newly released from prison; but still . . .
The stab of jealousy surprises me.
Never knew I was ambitious.
I discover I am now. The empire’s bigger than I knew and more complicated than I expected. Dying here would be a really shitty move.
‘Tezuka,’ General Luc says, ‘let’s keep this civil.’
This time it’s Anton’s face that tightens. He doesn’t like being patronized. It took Aptitude to tell me what that means. Before that, I just thought it was people being rude.
‘What do you want?’ he says.
Glad to see he’s ignoring the bit about being civil.
Twisting slightly, the Wolf nods to the bodies in the square. ‘They’re police,’ he says. ‘Killing police is a capital crime. Even village ones. What do you think I want? I want Vijay Jaxx’s messenger.’
‘The messenger didn’t kill those men.’
‘No,’ says General Luc. ‘He didn’t, did he? But he did refuse an order to stop. That’s a crime in itself . . .’
The Wolf smiles.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I only want to ask a few questions.’
Anton nods thoughtfully.
Now, I haven’t forgiven General Luc for upsetting Aptitude. And I’m not interested in Anton’s respect for the law complicating things. Besides, I need to ask Sergeant Leona some questions of my own. And I don’t rate my chances of getting her back once the Wolf has her. At least, getting her back unbroken.
‘Not going to happen. Want to know why?’
I take his silence as a yes.
‘This is a Death’s Head matter. You have a problem with Colonel Vijay’s messenger take it up with HQ. The day I get an order telling me to hand the messenger over is the day it happens. Until then . . .’
The Wolf looks me up and down.
‘You’ll remember me,’ I say. ‘How many seven-foot ex-Legion sergeants with one metal arm are you likely to meet?’
Anton laughs.
General Luc doesn’t like that.
As his pistol comes up, we hear a click as Anton works the slide on his hunting rifle. Seems like leaving it late to me. In my hand the SIG-37 shivers, runs a rapid diagnostic and chooses explosive. Since we’ve got metal bars behind us, stone walls both sides and doors ahead, I’m not too sure about its choice.
But I needn’t have worried.
Luc is staring at the automatic in my hand. He’s opening and shutting his mouth like a dying fish. Could be the fact it’s pointing at his gut. Although he seems too outraged for it to be just that.
‘Yeah,’ says my gun. ‘Right first time.’
The lights on his side arm are switching off one after another.
This is what usually happens when a semi AI weapon comes up against something fully AI. ‘That’s illegal,’ the Wolf says.
The SIG-37 sighs.
The general is right, of course.
It’s illegal almost everywhere.
In fact, owning a fully AI weapon is not just illegal, it’s a capital offence. I watch the Wolf remember that. See calculation enter his face as he wonders how he can use this to his advantage.
‘General Jaxx knows I have it.’
‘Does he now?’ the Wolf says.
‘Yeah. And so does our glorious leader.’
General Luc goes still. OctoV’s name has that effect on most people.
‘You realize,’ Anton says, ‘that Sven has met the emperor?’ He’s talking to the Wolf, obviously. ‘On more than one occasion?’
‘More than—?’ The Wolf knows about my meeting OctoV the day General Jaxx was made Duke of Farlight. Everybody knows about that. It was the emperor’s first public appearance in a hundred years.
‘Haven’t you?’ Anton says to me. ‘Met him, more than once?’
‘Three times,’ I say. ‘Unless it’s four.’
The general is scowling at me. The look of a predator denied its prey.
I’m nobody’s prey. But it impresses me General Luc thinks I might be. The Wolf is a man with no cut-off. Someone who doesn’t like to be denied.
Lowering his pistol, he holsters it as if I’m not there.
‘Change is coming,’ he tells Anton. ‘Decide where your loyalties l
ie.
’
‘They lie with the emperor.’ Anton says this firmly.
‘In that case,’ General Luc says, ‘maybe you need to consider where the emperor’s loyalties l
ie.
’
Chapter 9
‘SVEN,’ ANTON SAYS.
Yeah, I know. If you can’t fix it with a hammer, you’ve got an electrical problem. Doesn’t stop him saying it.
Takes me a day to rebuild Sergeant Leona’s gyrobike. Having removed its fairing, I unbolt its saddle, side boxes and shotgun holster. Inside all this is a single fusion unit, matched to a cheap gyro that will keep the bike upright in most conditions short of a direct hit.
Stripped to her singlet and combats, the sergeant sandblasts paint from its fairing on my orders. Sweat darkens Leona’s spine, and stains the singlet under her arms, finally sticking cotton to her breasts and gut.
‘Nipples like bullets,’ Anton mutters.
I’m supposed to be the one who says stuff like that.
Debro thinks the sergeant needs to take it easy. I think the fairing plates need to be able to flex properly. It’s obviously been years since they could do that.
Leona cuts back five coats of paint.
As she does, I take the fusion unit apart. It’s old, obviously enough. But the ceramic shielding is sound and the fuel rod good for several half-lives longer than all of ours added together. After the unit is back in one piece, I balance the wheel and take the Icefeld for a spin.
It brakes well enough, turns on the spot and lets me slide down a gravel slope without losing its grip. Getting back up again is tougher. But only because the engine isn’t really built for someone my size.
The next bike is quicker.
Sergeant Leona sandblasts the fairing as I rebuild the unit, balance its wheel and repair one set of brakes. As an after-thought, I check for bugs and find two.
My first thought is to crush them.
Instead, I put them on a shelf. If anyone bothers to check, I hope it will look as though the bike is sitting in a garage for the next few days. It’s when I cut the badges and braid and medal ribbons off my uniform that Debro decides I’m not just amusing myself and asks what’s going on.
‘I’m going to Farlight.’
‘You’d be an idiot to try.’
‘Debro—’
‘A complete idiot.’
‘Not true,’ the SIG says. ‘There are bits missing.’ You can always rely on it to help matters.
‘Vijay needs to know about General Luc.’
‘So send a message,’ Debro says. ‘It will be simpler. Probably quicker. And . . .’ She shrugs. ‘Safer all round, I imagine.’
Anton catches up with me as I’m adjusting the pair of coils that act as electric brakes on the Icefeld. It’s a simple enough system. Something about his scowl suggests Debro sent him. ‘Not much hope of arguing you out of this?’
‘None.’
‘Didn’t think so,’ he says.
Five minutes later he’s back with the other police bike we downed. When he reaches into his pocket for a hex set, I know Debro isn’t going to like this. Dropping to a crouch, he traces a wire to the bars and adjusts the brake lever. Then he follows a fibre optic from a switch under the lever down to the inside of the fairing.
‘Interesting,’ he says.
He says nothing for the next few minutes because he’s busy unscrewing the fairing. This done, he traces his optic to behind the wheel and removes the fender as well.
Gun mounts.
One at the rear matches another at the front. Both are activated by ribbons of optic. These bikes were designed to run S&Ps. Short-barrelled weapons that blip clips in seconds but fire fast enough to scare what’s out there.
‘Remove your fender,’ Anton tells Leona.
She looks at me.
I nod.
The sergeant goes to work.
When Anton returns he has an armful of pulse pistols, more optic and enough clips to start a small war. Stripping a barrel from its chassis, he unclips the chassis from its handle, removes a trigger guard, rips free a tiny panel and plugs optic into place.
Thumbing the button on the Icefeld’s handlebars produces a sharp click. Ignition not pin fire. Caseless not cartridges. We’re talking weight-reduction here.
Grinning, Anton slides a clip into place.
‘Better try it on single,’ he says.
A touch of a button and half the garage door disappears with a bang loud enough to bring Debro running. There’s a fist-sized chunk out of the wall beyond.
‘Just helping Sven,’ Anton says.
A look passes between them. No idea what it says. But Debro nods and disappears. A few minutes later Aptitude turns up with a plate of fried peppers and three beers. Anton takes his, I take mine, and Leona shakes her head.
‘Don’t waste it,’ I tell her.
The sergeant looks worried. There are rules against non-coms drinking with officers. Equally, there are rules against disobeying orders. And Aptitude is watching with a strange expression on her face.
She wants to know how I’ll handle this.
‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘We’re off-duty.’
Leona drinks.
Anton, meanwhile, strips back another pistol and sets about bolting its breech, barrel and clip box into position. There’s a dogged determination about him I recognize. Most days I see it in myself. Not since Hekati, though.
That thought halts the beer bottle halfway to my lips.
‘You OK?’ Aptitude asks.
‘Just thinking.’
My gun snorts. So I turn it off.
‘If you want to talk . . .?’ Aptitude says quietly.
Must shake my head too firmly, because she tells me she’s needed in the kitchens and shuts the stair door behind her with a bang.
The restlessness that brought me here is going to take me back to Farlight. There’s a chance I’ll die there. It’s better than evens. But better to meet death face on than sit around waiting for it to find you.
‘Going for a walk,’ I tell Anton.
Picking up my beer, I discover it’s already empty. Mind you, they’re small bottles.
It’s cooler outside than in the garage.
Well, provided you keep to the shade. Taking a track out of the village, I skirt the edge of the hill that Debro’s compound commands, and head for open country. It’s blisteringly hot and tar from the road sticks to my boots. There’s no one around to see me take off my shirt.
The flesh where my stump slides under the edge of my combat arm is raw. So I remove the arm to give the flesh some air. The scar tissue looks like tortoiseshell, with an open wound where metal has worn it away.
It used to look a lot worse until I met Colonel Madeleine.
Not only did she tidy up the stump, she liked the result so much she cut her initials into her handiwork. She also made me another arm.
Unfortunately I lost that on Hekati.
So now I have this one.
Old and crude, with a mess of overlapping plates and braided hoses.
A socket in the elbow takes a spike. A collection of ceramic blades slot into the forearm. I don’t wear these around Debro. Although a noise behind me makes me wish I did and that the arm was back on my shoulder where it belongs.
‘Sven . . .’
It’s Aptitude, carrying a fresh bottle.
‘Thought you might want . . .’ Her voice fades as she sees the state of my shoulder, although it’s already beginning to heal.
As my old lieutenant used to say, you need to be a fast healer or a fast learner. Since I wasn’t the second it was as well I was the first. And then she sees a scar on my side and walks around me, like she’s walking round a tree.
I make myself stand there.
‘Fuck,’ she says, and then blushes. ‘Was that the ferox . . .?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘That was people.’
‘You were tortured?’
‘Whipped,’ I tell her. ‘In the Legion. Usually it kills.’
Aptitude digests this. Handing me the beer, she sits herself on a rock and stares into the distance. Takes me a moment to realize it’s because my chest is bare. Since she’s just taken a good look at the scars on my back that doesn’t make any sense at all. But then I’m not a sixteen-year-old girl and I’m not high clan.
Refitting my arm, I tighten the grips that hold it in place. Pistons hiss and braided hoses flex as my fingers come back to life. The fighting arm is a work of art. It’s just a work of art made to fit someone else.
‘Our house medical AI—’
‘Aptitude.’
She stops talking.
‘It’s like that because I want it like that. Some lessons you need to remember.’ I’m pretty sure we’ve had this conversation before.
Not sure why we’re having it again.
‘But you remember it anyway.’
‘Without the scars I’d forget.’
We both know we’re not here to talk about my scars. And I’m pretty certain Aptitude didn’t leave Wildeside’s air-conditioning just to bring me a beer.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Spit it out.’
She flushes. Takes another long look at the horizon.
Smoke drifting from the rift at one edge and the line of hills that form the boundary to the Wolf’s estates at the other. Not much out there she’d want to look at. So I figure she’s taking care not to look at me.
But I don’t need to see her face to know she’s desperate. That’s obvious from the way she clenches her fists.
‘Sven . . .’
‘I don’t break my promises.’
She laughs, unhappily.’ You think I don’t know that? If anyone can protect Vijay from General Luc—’
‘So what’s this about?’
‘I want to go too.’
‘You can’t.’
Flipping round, she starts to protest and shuts up when I scowl. She looks as if she’s about to cry. And Aptitude doesn’t.
Not usually.
‘You’re taking Leona,’ she protests.
‘So?’
‘She’s a woman.’
‘No, she’s a sergeant in the Farlight militia. A combat-hardened, fully trained specialist with two tours of duty behind her.’ This has nothing to do with gender. Although I know Aptitude won’t believe that.
‘I’m scared,’ she says.
‘Of course you are . . .’
A nicely brought up girl like her. How could she not be?
Aptitude shakes her head crossly.’ You don’t understand. I’m going to get you both killed.’
‘Me and Leona?’
‘No! You and Vijay. The two men I—’
Wisely, Aptitude doesn’t finish that sentence.
‘Sven,’ she says, ‘I’ve already got Vijay in trouble. And now . . .’
I don’t realize I’m gripping her shoulders until she whimpers. Then I step back and make myself step back again. Telling her she’s a stupid little idiot isn’t the answer. So that means I’ve got to apologize.
‘You stay at Wildeside.’
She still wants to object, so I give her reasons. ‘If the Wolf captures you, Vijay’s dead. You think he wouldn’t give himself up?’
The tears come.
Ignoring them, I take another look at the horizon. I have a better idea than Aptitude what’s out there. ‘Your dad told you about the furies? We need sex and food. Some of us need to fight . . .’
She’s looking at me strangely.
Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned sex.
‘Furies need to kill. All their instincts are sewn up in one primal urge.’
‘They’re human?’
Maybe once, I think.
The definition of human is wide these days. Wide enough to include me, Anton and Debro, all three. But I’m not sure it can be pushed that far.
‘No,’ I say.
Better if Aptitude thinks of them as machines.
Unbuckling my gun belt, I wrap it around Aptitude’s waist.
‘Open the holster,’ I say.
Her fingers fumble with the catch.
‘And again. This time make it smoother.’
Aptitude’s second go is better. Her third better still. Slow healer, quick learner. Works for some people.
‘Now give me the gun,’ I say.
The correct term is a side arm or piece.
Actually, the correct term is SIG-37, with added Colt combat AI, up-rated memory chip and pulse-rifle capacity. Battle planning, forward projection, combat probabilities and one-minute certain. In U/Free territories the SIG would have voting rights.
One-minute certain means the SIG can tell you with 99.2 per cent accuracy what is going to happen in the next sixty seconds. (Combat situations only.) It’s a useful edge to have in battle.
Although it burns battery like nothing else.
I’ll take five minutes’ high probability, with some power left, over certainty any day. The other thing it does is tactics, targeting and three-level-deep identity.
If your enemy is running black flag it will tell you who they really are. And if that second identity is a lie, the SIG digs one level deeper.
I don’t bother Aptitude with any of this.
‘Keep it turned on,’ I tell her. ‘Keep it close. And do what it suggests, unless you have good reasons for thinking it’s wrong. Even then, check it’s not the other way round.’
‘You think the furies will attack?’
‘You’ve got food, you’ve got power. They can sense things like that. And the furies aren’t your only problem.’
She looks at me.
‘You heard the crowd. “Kill the doubter.”’
‘They were talking about Sergeant Leona.’
Aptitude’s right. But it won’t take the village long to transfer their hatred to Debro. She threw several families out of the compound when she reclaimed it. I know it’s hers. But they’re likely to look at it differently.