David Gunn - Death's head

“So,” says Colonel Nuevo. “There’s a sewer.” Even in the half-light of the dying fire I can see the calculation in his eyes. “Tell me,” he says. “Just how good is that little group of yours?”

Shil won’t meet my eyes, Franc gives a strained salute and excuses herself, and Haze hands me the SIG diabolo and turns away, before making himself turn back.

“It woke up.” He sounds upset and scared…and he’s staring everywhere but at the blood splattering my uniform.

“Woke up?”

“Yes, sir…So I reset it.”

“Reset what?”

“Its scan parameters.”

“You played with the settings on my gun?”

My voice is quiet, which scares him even more, and he’s right, because unless he comes up with a really good reason for messing with the SIG, I’m going to hurt him very badly indeed. I’ve seen soldiers get killed for less.

Taking a deep breath, Haze says, “I just stopped it draining quite so much power. I can restore the earlier settings, if that’s what you want.”

He’s bought himself a reprieve.

“Go on.”

“The combat chip was set to real time plus.”

“Which means what?”

Haze thinks I’m testing him. Actually, he might as well be talking another language.

“Five seconds absolute, fifteen high probable, two minutes high likely, and fifteen high possible; that’s a huge demand for any AI to carry. It looks like you were worried about…”

Haze hesitates, realizing what he’s just said.

“Don’t stop now,” I tell him.

“I mean,” he says, “you obviously expected a high-probability, high-impact event, set the AI accordingly, and then forgot to…”

Yeah, Haze just dug himself another hole.

Neen is the only one who remains with me as I strip off my combat armor, stuff handfuls of cold Dylidae lagarto meat into my mouth, and motion him to follow me down to the water’s edge.

“Keep guard,” I tell him.

Neen salutes. What’s worse, it looks like he means it.

The water is colder than earlier, and the mud is sticky beneath my feet; tiny predators nip at my legs and pond weed drags at my ankles like fingers. I’m not superstitious. Well, no more than the next soldier, but this night is leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

Unless that’s the kyp.

Idiot, I tell myself. All battles end with this feeling.

A scar on my knee is aching, as it does when it gets cold. The cut was into bone, a saber slash so powerful it embedded a blade in my leg that had to be wrenched free. Weirdly, the very viciousness of the blow saved my life. While the tribesman was still struggling to retrieve his sword, I put a knife through his heart.

Karbonne feels a long way from here.

Adapt or die, adapt and die…the options aren’t great, but one is definitely better than the other. As I climb from the water, the thoughts crowding my head are gone. The ferox is just a beast, its memories of death washed clean. I toss Neen my armor to scrub, struggle into the sodden trousers, and return to our fire. A minute or so later steam is rising off me like a saucepan on the boil.

“Right,” I say. “Tell me.”

“What, sir?”

“Where the others are. What’s troubling them?”

My sergeant’s face goes blank.

“Neen. That’s an order. ”

He looks at me, at the gun I’ve just drawn from its holster, and at the Death’s Head dagger driven into the dirt by my feet.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

My laugh surprises him. I can’t remember the last time anyone used that phrase and actually meant it. “Speak away.”

“You tortured a ferox to death, sir. You tortured it so badly you made it talk.”

“Fuckers can’t talk.”

“Everyone says this one did.”

“Everyone?”

He gestures at the camp around us. It is quiet, at least where we are. All the goodwill gained by sharing the alligator meat is gone in a single rumor.

“You’re a Death’s Head auxiliary,” I tell him. “You don’t worry what other people think. You worry what I think. Do you understand?”

He nods.

“Good,” I say. “Now, the ferox was injured, frozen, and half starving. It was trapped on the wrong planet in someone else’s war.”

The others are creeping back to listen. I’ll be teaching them to move more quietly.

“Join us,” I say.

As Neen’s eyes flick to the darkness, he smiles and I realize he just spotted his sister. She’s skinny as a rat and wears her scowl like a uniform, but I’ll forgive her for now, because she held up well enough when we were hunting the alligator, and besides she looks good naked.

“The ferox wanted to die,” I tell them. “I offered it death in return for information. The beast was grateful.”

“Sir,” says Franc, sliding herself between Neen and me. “That’s not what most people are saying.”

So I explain to her why that’s also good.

A moon climbs high in the sky and sets a silvery sheen across the marshland around us. The river glistens like a cheap ribbon, and my pond becomes a mirror. Lights can be seen in the distance, the city of Ilseville. We should be fighting. If this were the legion, we would be fighting. Instead we’re waiting for the peace talks to fail. Apparently the U/Free want to broker a clean surrender of the city.

We don’t want that. The Enlightened don’t want that. But we’re going through the motions because the United Free demand that we do, their need to interfere being almost as strong as their hunger for news and their obsession with anything exotic. Which, bizarrely enough, apparently includes us.

In the meantime we’re watching the Uplift city with our hiSats, and they’re watching this camp with their equivalent, and we’re both busy planning our next attacks come tomorrow noon.

An hour or so after my troop settle, Franc wanders out of the tent she’s sharing with Shil and I hear the noise as she pisses in the darkness. On her way back, she stops and takes a slow look around her, but doesn’t see me where I sit in the shadow of a broken fat-wheel. Neen wakes two hours before dawn and disappears toward the center of camp; when he comes back it’s with an armful of someone else’s wood to feed our fire.

“Sit,” I tell him.

He does what he’s told.

“How old are you?”

The trooper debates lying. “Eighteen,” he says at last.

It’s all I can do not to swear. “And the others?”

“Franc’s twenty-one. I don’t know about Haze.”

“And Shil?”

“Twenty-eight,” he says. “You know how it goes. She got drafted because I’m the only boy and we had to provide two soldiers, everyone did.”

“Describe your training.”

Neen looks at me, wondering how to answer. “We only got our uniform and rifles the day before yesterday,” he says. “And we didn’t really have training, as such. We’re from the next planet along.”

“But that’s…” I think it through. I only skimmed my briefing, since most briefings are bollocks; but this system has three planets, and all of them belonged to the enemy until recently.

“You were Enlightened?”

“No, sir. Not us. Only important people were that.”

We leave for the sewer and the city at dawn. Everything we own except our uniforms and weapons is left behind: our tents, food supplies, rucksacks, and fat-wheel combat. We’re going to do this on foot, because we stand a better chance of success that way.

As we move out, a trooper wishes us luck, and another makes the sign against evil. He bolts when he sees me notice.

“You enjoy it, don’t you, sir?”

Shil catches my stare, begins to look away, and then makes herself look back. Maybe she’s seen the way I look at her, or maybe she’s just enough like me to know that rank means nothing.