David Gunn - Death's head

“You are-?”

He’s about to blow everything, I just know it.

Instead, Haze salutes. “One of the team, sir. My name is Haze. I took the Uplifted apart, what was left of it.”

I don’t remember giving him permission to do that.

“What did you find?”

“Anemone optic, diamond memory, couple of teraflips of quantum processor, the usual…”

The colonel is looking at him very strangely. “Usual for what?”

“A machine, sir.” Haze looks around him, goes red again. He knows he’s the center of attention; his thoughts are just too much on the question in hand to realize why. If Haze did, he’d be white and it would be with fear. What he’s said is close enough to blasphemy to make no difference.

“It was dying,” I say. “Maybe already dead.”

“And your man is describing its body?” The colonel considers that. “Machinery is to a dead Uplifted what meat is to a dead human-say, to the dead body of Trooper Haze himself?”

I nod, trying not to hold my breath.

A second later the colonel nods. “That would be it,” he says. His gaze flicks over the room, challenging them to disagree. No one does.

“Line up.”

We do as ordered, coming to attention. At which point Major Silva appears carrying a black silk cushion. Both officers stop in front of me.

“For being first into the city I promote Sven Tveskoeg to full lieutenant, awarding him the Obsidian Cross, second class…”

I salute, because I can’t think of anything else to do.

Major Silva offers Colonel Nuevo the cushion and the colonel hangs the medal around my neck and everyone salutes again. As the colonel steps back a sergeant appears. He’s carrying an armful of filthy clothes. They’re the uniforms I made Franc, Shil, and Haze abandon before we entered the tunnel.

“Draw new clothes,” orders the colonel. “Retain your patches.”

The sergeant follows us from the room. He wants to make sure we collect the uniforms we’ve just been promised.

Ilseville square stinks of vomit, smoke, sex, and piss. A Death’s Head sergeant is taking a woman against a tree while a queue of junior NCOs wait their turn. Her child sits in the dirt, happily oblivious to what’s going on above. An Uplift temple is in flames, and one of the corporals waiting his turn is wearing the tasseled cap of a high priest.

Bars and brothels are hastily reopening in the streets behind us, making the best of what is going to happen anyway.

A trooper feeds hungry flames with broken furniture outside our house, and a beast turns on a spit above his fire. With its four horns and narrow shoulders, the animal looks rare and exotic, as if stolen from a zoo.

Heat has blackened its skin, and the drunken trooper who carves a fist-sized chunk from the beast manages to end up with a meal that is both burned and bleeding. If he doesn’t end up on his knees vomiting from alcohol, he’ll probably go down with food poisoning instead.

“Is it always like this, sir?” Shil’s voice is quiet.

“Always,” I say.

A trooper stumbles into me and I put him into a wall, angry not at his drunkenness but by knowing I was once him, half cut and impatient, waiting my turn for a skirt in a town that had just fallen.

“Lock the doors,” I order Maria.

She nods.

To the others, I say, “You can go back out, or you can stay in. Either way, your choice is made for the night. This door remains locked until morning.”

Neen opts for a night in the city.

Shil would object, but he outranks her and I’m watching.

Franc glances at Haze, who shakes his head. And so the decisions are made. Neen slips back through the door and everyone else stays inside.

“Let me know when you’ve locked up,” I tell Maria.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be in my room.”

She’s twenty-three, with a birthday in two weeks’ time, silken body hair between her legs, and nipples that look strangely pale in the candlelight. Her hips are full and so are her buttocks, too full really for my tastes, but her breasts are high and hard and she sits astride me with no shame, rocking herself into an orgasm that looks convincing.

“What’s your other name?”

“I don’t have one, sir.”

“No,” I tell her. “Nor do I, not really.”

She leaves my bed with a couple of red handprints on her buttocks and a bite below one breast. I have no doubt that, if ordered, she’d come to my room again.

“See you later.”

Maria giggles.

Midnight comes and goes, darkness deepening as clouds take the moon, and the blackness of the sky only serves to make the fires in the streets outside look brighter. Some are simple bonfires, others more serious. From a window on a landing two floors above the front door, I can see at least five burning houses, and something larger also in flames. Another temple maybe, or a brothel where the alcohol was too expensive or the whores insufficiently willing.

Steps creak and I spin.

A dot dances across the wall and finds my chest, remaining there. “Who is it?” demands Shil, her voice steady. She’s clutching a pulse rifle.

“It’s me.”

“Sir?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Me.”

“Do we have a problem, sir?”

“No. I’m just watching idiots burn the city. It’s fine, go back to bed.”

She hesitates.

“’Night, Shil…”

Five minutes later, when I get to the top of some stairs, I find her at a window watching the flames, her rifle forgotten. She’s quite obviously worrying about her brother.

“Trust him,” I say.

“It’s easy for-” she begins, then stops. “Sorry, sir.”

“He’s your sergeant,” I say.

“Your choice.”

“Yes,” I agree. “My choice.” There’s something in my tone that makes her turn. We’re very close to an argument, and it’s not one she can win.

“Franc might make a good sergeant,” she says finally.

I smile. “Franc’s a hairbreadth from insanity. Don’t get me wrong, I really like that in a woman, but as a replacement for Neen?” I shake my head. “It’s never going to happen.”

“What about me, sir?”

“You’re volunteering?”

Shil nods.

She says nothing when I stand behind her, and even less when I grip her shoulders, feeling them tremble. Her arm muscles are tight, and her shoulder blades hard-edged beneath the cloth of her borrowed nightgown. I can count off every rib as my fingers drop to her side, and her hip is sharp beneath my hand for the second it takes her to twist away from me.

“Is that your price?” she demands.

“Why? Is that what you’re offering?”

Her slap almost connects and then she’s against the wall, one hand twisted high behind her back.

When I step away, her fingers drop toward a knife on her hip that isn’t there. The action is entirely instinctive, and says more about her previous life than I’ve discovered in days.

“Neen’s a natural,” I tell her. “Deal with the fact he’s your brother or I’ll transfer you.”

A knocking wakes me, and a trooper announces that one quarter of the city has risen. He’s not looking for me in particular; his orders are to rouse every house in the square. Other soldiers are working the streets behind us.

Neen is behind the soldier, slouched on our doorstep. He has a black eye to match the graze he got climbing from the sewer, but he’s awake and mostly sober and looking very pleased with himself.

“Good night?”

Scrambling to his feet, he snaps out a salute.

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.” If he notices Shil’s sourness he brushes it off, assuming it has more to do with him than me.