David Gunn - Death's head

“Weapons?”

I shake my head.

“You’ll have to remove that arm.”

Behind me Sergeant Hito begins to object, very politely. All four men outrank him. “The general himself…” They retract the moment the sergeant explains that General Jaxx wants to see Colonel Madeleine’s latest work.

“You stay here,” one says.

The sergeant looks like he wants to object to that, too, but does what he is told and I enter the general’s study alone. It is the same man. As tall as he ever was. Only now he’s wearing a black smoking jacket with narrow trousers, both decorated with a single band of silver piping.

Out of uniform, the only sign he controls a regiment is the silver signet ring on his left hand. A grinning skull, mouth mocking and hollow eyes taunting the world.

“Sven,” he says.

I wait; it’s all I can do.

“We have a job for you. One ideally suited to your talents.”

What talents? I want to ask, but I make myself stay silent.

“What do you know about Farlight?”

“Nothing, sir.”

He nods. “Even better.” Walking across to a sideboard, he pours two drinks from a decanter. He doesn’t tell me what the drink is or ask if I want one, but since he sips from his first and then downs the rest in a single gulp, ending with an obvious sigh of satisfaction, I do the same.

“Single malt,” he says. “An old Earth drink.” He hesitates, smiling slightly. “You know about Earth?”

“Very little,” I say.

“What about its end?”

It’s one of those days for keeping my face blank. Whatever I know, or in this case don’t know, it seems best to keep to myself.

“Slightly over six hundred years ago the singularity swallowed its own children…”

He pauses. “Or maybe it ate its own parents. Experts disagree…You don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

I shake my head.

He smiles. “I can’t tell you,” he says, “how happy that makes me.”

The job is simple. I’m to flip to Farlight, hunt out a traitor whose name I will be given on arrival, and kill him, his bodyguards, and his entire family. If his palace catches fire at the same time that will be even better.

“We will, of course, deny having even heard of you if you fail.”

“And if I succeed?”

“You will be inducted into the Death’s Head, undergo formal training, and fight the one campaign all new entrants must undertake. After which, you will work for me and only for me.”

He waits.

Am I meant to thank him?

After a moment, he smiles. “I like you,” he says. “People say you’re an animal. They’re wrong. Animals don’t think. Well, not the way you do. I can see we’re going to work well together.”

I might think, but obviously not fast enough. It takes me a second or two to realize he’s given me my cue to leave.

Farlight is vast. A sprawl of a city trapped in the bowl of a long-dead volcano. It’s layered with history, like some exotic omelet. For a start, single streets have half a dozen different names, while boulevards end abruptly and grand squares have lost out to viral attacks that leave half their buildings looking like molten wax.

Palaces fill the center and slums crawl up the slopes of the volcano’s caldera until the sides become too steep for normal building, and huts on stilts and hardfoam shacks become all that cling to the rock. After a few hundred paces even these peter out and the crater’s sides can be recognized for what they are.

All this I see in the time it takes an old cargo freighter to overfly the city at a height I’m surprised the emperor allows. When I mention this a crew member grins.

“Upset someone, probably.”

“Who did?”

“We’re being paid to drop low over Boulevard Mazimo. So presumably we’re ruining someone’s posh lunch.” He laughs. “I guess they left someone off their guest list.”

Carl grins, slaps me on the shoulder, and offers me half of what remains of his sausage, which seems to be made from rancid meat mixed with enough garlic to bury the stink of one thing under the stink of another.

As good a description of Farlight politics as I’m likely to find.

I thank him, say I’ve just eaten.

He’s the ship’s cargo skipper. We originally met in a bar in high orbit. A joint I’ve never visited before, obviously enough, but recognize immediately. A row of stalls at the back speak of hasty blow jobs and up-against-the-wall fumbles. I get the same glance from a dozen different men, checking for the law, ex-wives, and debt chasers. And a barkeep comes out from behind his counter the moment I trip some scanner built into the door.

“No weapons,” he says.

“I’m not carrying.”

“You’ve been scanned.”

“All right. I’m not intending to use.”

He opens his mouth again.

“I could, however, change my mind.”

The madam laughs. “Give him a drink,” she says, and I’m in.

Carl wanders over to ask where I got my coat. I examine his question for double meanings and wonder if some other query is coded beneath its surface, but the man is serious. He prides himself on dressing well and wants one like it.

“Belonged to a Death’s Head sergeant.”

He looks startled.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “He won’t want it back.” This is true enough. Sergeant Hito took it from stores, the previous owner having no need of it. “You can have it,” I say, “if you can get me to Farlight.”

“There’s a drop shuttle,” he tells me. “Leaves every hour.”

It’s my turn to look at him.

“Ballistic silk lining,” I say. “Half-chameleon outer layer, runs on sunlight and sodium glare. Infinitely more effective than full chameleon, which is much too obvious.” I’m only repeating what Sergeant Hito told me, but it sounds convincing and I want to get rid of the coat. Call me suspicious, I can’t help suspecting General Jaxx has a neat little transponder bug fixed in there somewhere.

Carl’s sold, and I have my ride…

“You sure you aren’t hungry?”

“Quite,” I say, waving away his offer of rancid salami. So Carl wanders away to do whatever he does on Trillion Two Zero Three, which seems to be very little. A while after we land he looks around quickly, checks that the ramp exiting the cargo bay is clear, and nods meaningfully.

A quick shake of my hand and I’m out of his life, my coat still on his back and a half-chewed mouthful of salami still churning away in his mouth.

The landing area is one vast field of docked craft. A high steel fence surrounds it, and from the battered condition of some of the newly arrived ships my guess is the fence exists as much to keep the crews in as to keep the rest of the city out. No one stops me as I slide between two vast pod-shaped vessels and duck under the belly of a third. People come and go, a man laughs out of sight, and a small boy sits on an upturned box watching a five-legged spider bot make a clumsy repair to a runner.

Even out at Fort Libidad we saw runners. They’re those tiny two-man hovers that barely rise above head height, but can handle any terrain. I wonder what use a runner is here and realize, as the boy’s father appears, that the craft is used to navigate the landing area and the boy is a cargo worker’s son.

“What are you doing here?”

“Watching,” I say, which seems fair enough.

The boy’s father scowls.

“Your spider bot’s fucked,” I tell him.

He scowls again, maybe at my language, maybe at my accent, or maybe he just objects to people pointing out the obvious.

“Which is more important,” I ask him. “Getting that weld finished, or having the bot work properly?”