David Gunn - Death's head

It’s what you do with the rank that counts.

“I’m used to it,” I tell her. “And you’d better get used to it, too.”

“You know, sir,” she says, “people around here say you’re not human.” Shil raises her chin, and I know she’s wondering if she’s gone too far.

“Do you think the Enlightened are human?”

“But that’s the point,” says Shil. “They don’t want to be.”

“Whereas I was born like this?”

Shil glances away, and the next few minutes pass in awkward silence. “I’m sorry, sir,” she says finally. “I didn’t mean to speak out of turn.”

“You didn’t. Believe me; you’d know if you had.”

The others are listening in, so I address the next comment to all of them. “Within reason, you can say anything. But question or disobey an order and I’ll kill you on the spot.”

They grin when I grin, but we all know it’s not a joke.

“What’s within reason?” asks Haze.

“No blasphemy. No treason. No saying we’re going to lose.”

“Are we?” Shil asks.

My smile is sour. “Not if I can help it.”

Our own tents come to an end shortly after this and we string out in a line, heading for a distant row of trees. I take point and Neen brings up the rear; the rest of them walk fifteen paces apart, trying to tread only in the footsteps of the person in front.

As we get closer to those trees the ground grows firmer underfoot and our boots stop being sucked by mud. The thorns are stunted, ripe with berries that are probably poisonous. A dragonfly the size of my fist hovers over sullen water; its wings in the early-morning half-light are as iridescent as its body is drab.

I stop, feeling the others stop behind me.

The way looks clear. So far I’ve been relying on flickers of memory taken from the ferox, but it was in pain and sometimes close to unconscious…Tracks are what I really need.

My troop wait.

A cold wind from behind us carries the faintest traces of our distant fires. We’re out of sight of our own camp. What I need to know is whether anyone is watching us from up ahead. My kyp is useless; it hasn’t been able to pick up anything in days. And I’m not certain it could recognize the Enlightened anyway.

Communicated, freely tied, willingly of one accord. A dozen different phrases pretend to tell the UnEnlightened what it’s like to make the change. I suspect few of them come close to the reality.

A quick flick of my hand and the others begin to move forward. Roots catch at our boots and low loops of thorn act like trip wires, but we keep moving until the trees thin and we hit a plowed field. It’s the first such field any of us have seen since landing. Huge footprints lead toward the gate where I stand. A twist of fur is caught in the hinge, and dry blood on wood indicates where the ferox halted to gather breath.

I’ve got what I need.

We find bodies an hour later. A woman missing half her skull, and a man ripped from abdomen to shoulder, despite his body armor. Both have fired their weapons from the smell of the barrels.

Behind me I hear Franc and Haze vomit.

Another three corpses wait for us half an hour after that. One is clean-killed, head twisted so far his vertebrae have simply shattered. The others are messy, but still cleaner than the first two.

“Strip the bodies,” I order.

Haze shakes his head, and then staggers back, clutching his jaw. It’s not hard as punches go, but I’ve still not forgiven him for messing with my gun, even if he did make it better.

“Want to join them?” I ask, nodding at the bodies.

The others go very still.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Haze says.

He gets to strip the three bodies on his own, as punishment. The boy’s overweight and clumsy and it takes him twice as long as it should, but he manages it eventually.

Two women, one man…all very dead.

Shil, Haze, and Franc swap uniforms. Although I allow them to scrub clean their new outfits first. The ditch they use is muddy, and I’m not sure that washing the uniforms makes that much difference, but it seems to matter.

About ten minutes after this we reach the sewer.

It sounds simple. First two bodies, then three bodies, a change of clothing for the junior troopers, and a quick march to the entrance of a tunnel. But my ankles are rubbed raw by my boots, and if I feel like that, then God knows how the others must feel. We’ve just marched for two hours across marshland and mud, enough to exhaust even hardened troopers.

I’ve ordered them to swap weapons, too. So now they’re armed with pulse rifles belonging to the enemy. It’s Shil who asks me why. After she makes absolutely sure I understand she’s after information only, and she’s in no way questioning my judgment. Her voice as she explains this is just deadpan enough to avoid outright insolence.

We stop. I stare at her. “You tell me,” I say.

Shil chews her lip, the first sign of weakness she’s displayed since we hunted alligator together, and she stops the moment she realizes I’ve noticed. Neen and the others are watching us.

“If you get captured,” Shil says finally. “We simply say we’re Ilsevillect militia and you captured us. And we’re really glad to be rescued.”

“And…?”

“If necessary, we can pretend that we captured Neen and you.”

“Well done.”

Shil’s brother looks so shocked it makes me want to laugh. So I sit everyone down in the entrance to the tunnel and tell them what’s going to happen, why it’s going to happen, and exactly what I expect of them.

I don’t bother explaining what’s going to happen if they fuck up. They’re not stupid; they can work that out for themselves.

In the center of Ilseville is a Trade Hall. Old and decrepit, it’s impressive on first viewing but poorly defended with too many ways in. These are the colonel’s words to me and he’d better be telling the truth. Inside the hall is an Uplifted; our job is to capture it.

“You mean an Enlightened,” says Haze without thinking. He’s backing away from me before I’ve even turned to face him.

“No,” I say. “I mean Uplifted.”

“It’ll be guarded,” says Neen.

“Well guarded,” Shil adds.

And I realize something: These people know about this. “You’ve seen an Uplifted?”

Everyone glances at everyone else. If it wasn’t so funny, I’d be angry.

“Haze has,” says Franc. “Once, in passing.”

The way she says this sounds like she’s giving Haze his story, a story to which she’s expecting him to keep, and from the way the boy’s refusing to meet my eyes, whatever the real story is…It’s way more complex than Franc’s simple outline makes it sound.

“Haze,” I say, “this Uplifted you saw once, describe it…”

He hesitates, but only because he’s struggling for the right words. “It’s like a machine,” he says finally. “Pyramid-shaped and full of lights, almost pretty. But very dangerous.”

That’s it, the sum total of his description.

It doesn’t matter how much I demand clarification, all my anger does is lock the truth tight in his throat. We go into the darkness in silence and no one looks in my direction for a very long time.

Like the guts of an ice worm,” I say when we’re twenty minutes into the tunnel. Some round-mawed machine has bored its way through compacted mud, shitting concrete onto the walls as it goes, only the concrete is crumbling, and fractures reveal dark earth beyond.

Neen bites. “What’s an ice worm?”

“Bit like this,” I say, “only natural. Eats its way through ice, obviously enough. People live inside them.”

“Where?” demands Shil.

“On Paradise.”