David Gunn - Death's head

“That was a joke,” says Colonel Nuevo.

I realize I’m already standing at attention.

“The general is impressed,” he adds. “Three weeks and you’ve already formed a team, taken half a dozen camps, killed one of the trustees, and begun to make people worried.”

I nod.

“The least you could do,” he says, “is look smug.” Flicking open a silver cigarette case, he extracts a long black cigarette and ignites it with an ivory lighter, offering one to me as an afterthought.

“No thank you, sir.”

“Why not?

“Bad for you,” I say.

He looks at the knife in my hand and smiles. “You’ve lost me a month’s wages,” he says, sounding less than upset.

“Really, sir?”

“The general said you’d do it in three weeks. I told him five. Get your things,” he says. “We’re out of here.”

I’ve been on Paradise for less than a month. And yet, leaving is harder than I ever imagined. Phibs will come out on top, or be trusted adviser to someone who does. He will collect his little pile of gold, or whatever it is Phibs is so busy collecting.

He will grow rich, establish power bases. People will come to him for medicines and knives and food, because there’s always one man who has these available, for a price.

Anton and Debro are different.

They have only their ideals, and these crack, tarnish, and break. Some people are unable to live with the damage this does to them. I know. Lieutenant Bonafont lives in my memory as a brilliant tactician, natural teacher, and able handler of men. Which is probably why he ended up running a two-bit fort hundreds of miles south of a city that was a city only in name.

He began as somebody like Anton. I understand that now. His voice in my head is educated, polite, well brought up…all the things I will never be.

This sets me wondering. Why did the man waste his time on me? Because no officer in the legion, not even one reduced to commanding a fort in the middle of nowhere, need ever bother himself with a twelve-year-old refugee, an accident left over from an afternoon’s casual slaughter.

Yet Lieutenant Bonafont did.

He taught me how to hold a knife and fire a pulse rifle. He taught me how to track and how to understand the weather. I learned to read skies and be able to tell from the grit beneath my feet whether someone had walked that route before me. And he taught me other things, which seemed pointless to me.

Not to eat with my fingers. How to hold my temper. Why I should always drink a glass of clean water before going to bed drunk.

Maybe it’s the debt I owe Lieutenant Bonafont that makes me keep returning to the debt I owe Debro and Anton, because I’m worrying about them. Mostly I’m worrying that Debro will stop Anton from being sufficiently ruthless to keep the things we’ve gained. And as I walk back along the corridor, with a knife still hanging loose at my side, my thoughts should be on the shower I’ve been promised, the new clothes, and my meeting with the general…

I regret having failed to persuade Colonel Nuevo that the others should come with me, an essential part of my team.

He will not hear of it.

Although he is prepared to consider Phibs, which is a surprise in itself. He is prepared to consider Phibs, but not Debro or Anton. And so I condemn a man who doesn’t even know he has a second chance to no chance at all, because I want Phibs to back up Anton, at least in the short run.

I’m coming to understand politics better than I expect.

“Well?” asks Debro.

She’s sat in one corner of our newest camp, stroking the hair of the child we gained along the way and talking and talking to the small girl endlessly. I have no idea what she says, but Debro speaks incessantly and quietly and sweetly, in a way I’ve never seen her speak to an adult, not even Rebecca.

“What did they say?” asks Anton.

I glance around the camp, see Phibs watching from one corner, and nod to him. A second later I nod to Debro and Anton and wander outside. Phibs arrives first, Anton second, and finally Debro. Behind her I can hear the rising whine of a child.

“How old?” I ask.

“No idea,” says Debro. “In this place it’s almost impossible to say.”

“Are you planning to keep her?”

“Of course I’m keeping her,” she says crossly. Shaking her head as if there are subtleties I will never understand.

“What happened?” asks Phibs. “We got problems?”

I shake my head. “The camp’s already deserted,” I tell them. “Someone’s even left you an armchair, a bottle of vodka, and two glasses.”

Anton’s eyes go wide.

“What is going on?” Debro says, her face suddenly serious. Out of all of them, she’s always the one who can read the signs. One of life’s natural trackers.

I take a deep breath, look around at the ceramic walls and the crudely cut door into what has briefly been my world. “I’m leaving,” I say.

Phibs opens his mouth, but no words come out.

“No one leaves,” says Anton.

“What do they want from you?” asks Debro.

Looking at the woman I’ve briefly borrowed as a sister, I have to admit that I don’t know.

“Who came?” she asks.

“A colonel,” I say. “From the Death’s Head.”

“And you know this man?” Debro’s voice is matter-of-fact. As if the answer to this question is already obvious. Which, in a way, it is. People do not get dragged out of Paradise on a whim. Although it seems I’ve been sent here on exactly such a whim.

“This colonel,” says Anton. “Would he work for General Jaxx?”

I nod.

“And where are you going now?”

Thoughts flicker across his face. A certain calculation can be seen. He’s not cruel or conniving, just very intense and very very serious. As I consider how to answer, I realize that both he and Debro are waiting on my words.

Phibs, too, but in a different way.

He’s just interested.

“Farlight City,” I say, and catch it then. In that second I understand what they want and what I can do for them. I know it before Debro even opens her mouth to ask. Makes few friends, said my first and only psychological test on joining the legion. Utterly faithful to those he does…

I will protect their daughter. Whatever it is Debro and Anton want from me I will do…I tell them this and give them my word. It’s a legion oath, binding until death, and for all Debro’s professed hatred of the military she kisses me on both cheeks and tells me her prayers will hold me to it.

Can you get me a drink?” The naked girl glances up from her screen, on which an impossibly beautiful tribal woman is saying good-bye to a legionnaire who has the kind of rugged good looks and smoldering smile that would see him a target for everyone’s spite in the real world.

I wonder which role Caliente is playing and why she doesn’t just jack the feed straight into her mind like everybody else on this ship.

“Sure,” I tell her. “Vodka okay?”

She smiles.

“What are you playing?”

“It’s new,” she says. “Really neat.”

The vodka comes already chilled over ice. I love the drink machine in her room. Waiting while Caliente shifts on her chair to make room for me, I take another glance at her game; it all looks pretty ordinary to me. “What’s good about it?”

“Thing’s got rules.”

I look at Caliente and remember why I chose her last time. Full breasts, but not too heavy, and hips that can be gripped. The chair is too small for both of us. So I pick her up and put her on my lap.

“All games have rules,” I say.

She looks slightly disbelieving. As if she wants to contradict but isn’t sure she dares. Instead she wriggles prettily. Which, if it doesn’t get my uniform stained from inside, is going to get it stained from outside anyway.