Jon Grimwood - redRobe

‘You’re not an observer.’ It was a statement not a question.

‘Well done,’ said Axl.

‘You told me…’

Axl didn’t care what he told her. Two people were talking in the hall and Axl was busy registering a voice he’d been half expecting, half dreading, ever since he’d recognised the sergeant that night in the stables exactly a week ago…

‘ Well,’ said the voice, ‘have you found Father Sylvester yet?’ The words were utterly flat, without accent and yet they gripped Axl’s attention the way crocodile clips grip testicles. Party time.

The revolver was in his hand before Axl even realised that he’d drawn it. Three strides took Axl to the doorway and the crack of the barrel as it met Colonel Emilio’s head was louder than the thud the big man made when he hit the floor. Just nothing like as loud as the single drum kick that swallowed up the rest of Axl’s soundtrack and spat it out as echo.

Axl was feeling better about life already.

‘Freeze,’ he said loudly, and behind Colonel Emilio, the lieutenant did just that, like someone had dipped her in liquid nitrogen.

‘This is private,’ Axl told momaDef, ‘strictly between friends.’

‘You know the CO?’

‘Yeah, but he won’t remember,’ said Axl over his shoulder, as he turned back to defMoma who was still inside the room. ‘I looked different then.’

The fat sergeant had her hand hovering over the half-open, velcroed flap of her own holster, unable to complete the move without making that familiar ripping sound. The one that tells you someone is about to draw their weapon.

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Axl and nudged the revolver in her direction. Choosing advanced weaponry then wrapping it in a neoprene container apparently designed to make it difficult to get at made no sense at all to Axl. He’d take a skeleton holster or a lanyard over a closed-top holster any time.

‘Come in,’ Axl gestured to the lieutenant, who did as he said, stepping over the Colonel.

‘You’ll find Clone in the kitchen,’ Axl told the sergeant, sweeping his arm across the other half of the long table so the last of the clutter hit the floor. ‘Tell him to bring supper.’

‘Get your own fucking ...”

The fat woman didn’t finish because Axl put a bullet into the wall behind her, showering her broad shoulders and cropped head with coin-sized chunks of plaster. The kind that knock normal people to the floor from shock if nothing else.

He got complete silence then. Inside his head and out. The ringing Silence that comes when human ears try to adjust from one extreme of noise to the other.

‘Food,’ said Axl firmly.

The sergeant wanted to kill Axl. Wanted it so badly the need was written in her blue eyes and in the muscles that stood out in her thick arms and knotted her jaw. He could almost taste the adrenaline sweating off her. But she wasn’t going to get the chance. None of them were.

‘Put your gun on the floor first,’ Axl told defMoma and waited while she did.

It wasn’t her white trash manners, wrong-end-of-the-bell-curve genetic coding, macho ignorance or what defMoma did or didn’t have dangling between her fat legs that fucked Axl off, it was her PaxForce uniform, pure and simple. The twenty pocket combats. The silicon dogtag. The sweat-stained dirty grey T-shirt stretched tight over steroid shoulders.

‘Thank you.’ Scooping up her gun, Axl flipped open the holder in a squeal of velcro and spun her Colt hiPower, Blackjack style, trying it for balance. Not bad, but not as good as the revolver held in his other hand. Where balance went, that was perfect.

‘At least I’m not in love with my fucking weapon,’ snapped the lieutenant.

‘Well, shit,’ said Axl, glancing between defMoma and momaDef. ‘Maybe you two just never met the right gun.’

Same as it ever was. Chance threw the sixes and he kicked over the dice. By nightfall Axl had a sour taste in his throat no amount of putting one over Colonel Emilio could have shifted.

But the evening began well enough, once he’d managed to persuade the sergeant she really did want to order a conscript to cook Kate and Mai supper. He let momaDef prop Colonel Emilio up against a wall. The man’s thick greying hair had stopped the blow from being fatal or even that serious. Axl had to admit to feeling slightly disappointed.

Even Mai could have cooked better but it wouldn’t have been half so much fun as making the sergeant order her troopers to do it. What they got served was some kind of crude pancake, made from sour milk and barley flour cooked on a griddle.

‘ Tsampa,’ said Kate when Clone slammed a plate piled high with the pancakes down on the table. Clone was willing to let someone else use his kitchen, just about. But no conscript was going to serve Kate.

With the tsampa went preserve, dark as venous blood and made from crushed berries. And even the soyburgers Axl used to flip for McDonalds at the aeropuerto outside Day Effé tasted better. They drank from clay bowls that were greasy round the rim from the yak butter that floated like tiny oil slicks on top of the green tea. It was a safe bet that somewhere in his rations the unconscious Colonel Emilio would have a vacuum-sealed sachet of pure Colombian, but Axl decided to go after that later.

defMoma and momaDef didn’t eat, just watched in heavy silence as Kate and Mai sat at the table and calmly ate their supper, talking only to each other as if Axl and the PaxForce officers didn’t exist.

Fucking brilliant.

It was costing Kate though, that much was obvious from the way she chewed occasionally at the inside of her mouth. And the way her hand shook slightly as she raised the tea bowl to her lips.

Still, he couldn’t have done it better himself, Axl thought. Actually if he was being honest, he couldn’t have done it at all. Getting in someone’s face by not. getting in their face was a skill Axl lacked.

Violent and demented he could do easily enough. Where he originated from that was simple survival stuff, but Mai’s simmering contempt and Kate’s complete indifference were way more subtle…

Kate nodded to Mai, who downed her final cup of buttered tea.

‘Thank you,’ said Kate to Axl, as he stood to pull back her chair. ‘I enjoyed that.’

‘Yeah ...' Mai stuffed the second to last tsampa in her mouth, wiped up the remains of the preserve with the only one remaining and put it in her jacket pocket. On her way out of the dining room, she kicked the big wooden door shut with her heel.

‘Jesus,’ the lieutenant said in disgust. ‘How can you eat in the same room as that little tramp. She’s got the manners of a pig.’

‘Really?’ Axl shrugged and did his best to look puzzled. ‘You obviously move in better circles…’ He glanced to where the sergeant was sprawled in a chair, vast breasts flopped onto her jutting gut, black sweat patches Rorschach-blotting her singlet, the only item of clothing she wore on top. Now that Kate and Mai were gone, she was stuffing handfuls of dried apple porridge direct from a foil sachet to her mouth.

The lieutenant’s lips twisted, but she was already moving on to what was really bugging her. ‘Helping the enemy. Attacking members of PaxForce. You want to tell me…’

The rest of momaDef’s question was drowned out by the splash of Colonel Emilio vomiting onto marble tiles. Shock or the side effect of concussion, Axl didn’t care. The man should still have tried to make it to the window.

‘Tell me too,’ said the Colonel, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Or maybe we can skip straight to the bit where I kill you.’ He held a baby Uzi in one hand and was using his other to pull himself up, fingers gripping the edge of a Bon tapestry.