David Gunn - Death's head

Another two Uplifted go down as Neen sweeps the room. They’re already dead by the time I hit the door.

“Good call.”

“Thank you, sir.” Neen looks at me, then looks at his sister, and makes a decision. “Permission to…”

I nod.

“Please don’t send Shil to another unit.”

“Why would I?”

“Shil said she asked you to make Franc sergeant instead of me, and now you’re angry with her.”

“Forget it,” I tell him. “I already have.”

The Uplifted sits in one corner. Wherever the thing originally sat it wasn’t here, because a bundle of filaments have been slashed in a hurry. A huge diamond nestles in anemone optic, a jumble of teraflips are tied into the matrix memory, and the thing is pulsing like festival lights.

Something tells me the colonel is going to be pleased.

Who’s running the water?”

“Haze, sir,” says Franc, slicing dried fruit onto a wooden board. I can’t help but notice she’s using the blade she used to stab the old woman and the guard outside the Trade Hall.

We’re in the kitchen, and pipes are hammering in the corner. The last time anyone but Haze went into Lord Filipacchi’s bathroom, it was so damp that tiles had begun to fall from the walls.

“I’ll talk to him.”

She shakes her head.

“Something you want to tell me?”

Franc shakes her head at that, too. “Please, sir,” she says. “Leave it.” Something about the way she says this is almost desperate. She’s put the knife down and is facing me full-on, completely defenseless. Sometimes it’s how people behave without realizing it that matters.

“He’s not what he seems, is he?”

That gets her attention. “In what way, sir?” Franc asks.

I think about it. “He’s a girl after all.”

Franc laughs. “Oh,” she says. “He’s definitely male.” And then her face goes red and it’s obvious she’s wondering how to approach something. I’m her boss, her commanding officer, but something is worrying her at a much deeper level.

“Tell me.”

“Please,” she says. “Let it go, sir.”

That’s not the way the army works.

But she’s already moved on. “He trusts you,” she says. “And there’s something else, sir.” Franc hesitates. “Your gun told Haze he required a role model. You’re it.”

“Franc…”

“It did, sir. I’m serious.”

So am I. “He’s a soldier,” I tell her. “An auxiliary. He obeys my orders. That’s all there is to it. And tell him to stay away from my gun.”

By the end of the week a routine is established. Maria buys food and Franc cooks it; Neen spends his nights on the town, or he does for the first three nights then stops when he realizes Maria is no longer coming to my bed.

She’s sweet, more than willing.

But I’m restless and know myself well enough to know when I need to sleep alone. There’s a taste like static in my mouth and an ache behind my eyes that I only ever get in the last few days before a battle.

As for Haze, he takes baths, plays with his machines, and comes out only when he feels like it. And then one morning, toward the end of the week, there’s no heat in the house and no hot water and I find Haze in the kitchen, swaddled in towels, being comforted by Franc.

“Coffee,” I demand.

Franc makes it, which involves lighting a fire in a bucket, using broken bits of kitchen chair, a handful of wooden cooking utensils, and sparks from a tinder stick, which she carries on her belt.

“Bring it to my study.”

She nods, but it’s Haze who arrives at my door with coffee and news. Insurgents have killed our electricity. Instead of doing the obvious and hitting the power core, they chose to blow up the pumping station next door. Without water the power station has had to shut down. “Thought you might want this, sir.”

He hands me a power pack.

“For my gun?”

Haze nods, looking guilty.

“I’ve told you…”

Now he’s scared as well. “We only chat, sir. That’s all.”

“About what?”

“Azimuth and angle, how to trig building heights. Really basic stuff. It’s just, sometimes I need to talk tech.”

He’s serious.

Tossing him the SIG diabolo, I say, “Clean it, check the power, and fill any clips that need filling, but remember who owns it. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good, because otherwise I’ll put you up against a wall myself.”

The night after the attack on the pumping station, a suicide squad targets Colonel Nuevo’s HQ, and the most beautiful house on Ilseville Square becomes rubble. The colonel is dining at a restaurant nearby; Major Silva and Benj Flypast are asleep in rooms on the third and fourth floors, respectively.

I wake to find sappers still sorting through the rubble, and smoke from the explosion still drifting across the square. And a knock on my door tells me it’s going to be one of those mornings.

“Sir…”

It’s Maria, which means she’s had to roll out of Neen’s fur-covered bed, dress herself half decently, and climb two flights of stairs to my turret. She’s out of breath, but that’s not necessarily from climbing the stairs.

“I know.”

We’re seeing a pattern here. A pattern familiar from any occupied city. Maria’s moved from sharing my bed to sharing Neen’s. In the scheme of things it’s probably a wise move. And who knows, maybe she actually likes him.

Shuffling on my uniform, I head downstairs and answer the front door myself. Passing messages back and forth simply wastes time. A boy, even younger than the last one, stands on my doorstep. His chest looks too thin for its waterfall of silver braid.

“Sir, the colonel, sir, he wants-”

“To see me.”

The new second lieutenant nods.

“We’ll be there.”

“No, sir. He just wants to see you. ”

I take my team anyway.

“Sven…”

The colonel is standing by a window; two serious-looking men sit at a table behind him. They look anxious, tired, and rather afraid. Engineers, I think, still failing to give us back our power. The house to which I’ve been led is large, just not as large as the one that lies in ruins three streets away.

“Good,” he says. “You came alone.”

“They’re waiting out there,” I tell him, nodding toward his office door.

Colonel Nuevo sighs.

The two men at the table might as well not exist for all the attention he’s paying them. Taking two glasses from a silver tray, the colonel pours me something clear and bitter. I get the feeling he’s really pouring one for himself. “I need a new ADC…” He raises his glass. “You’re it.”

“Me?”

“I have my reasons,” he says. A wave of his hands dismisses the two men, who scrape their chairs against the floor in their haste to escape. “Wait outside,” he tells them, to their obvious disappointment.

“Engineers?”

“No.” The colonel shakes his head. “Experts on the Uplifted, completely fucking useless, both of them. I’m going to shoot one of them. I just haven’t decided which. It died, you know.”

“The thing?”

“Simply shut itself down. But we’ve got bigger problems.” He flicks up a screen, touches his finger to a slab, and the city spreads out below me, seen from a great height.

“View from the mother ship?”

“I wish…high-orbit satellite. Still, at least the general left us that.”

So General Indigo Jaxx is gone. Do I dare ask where? Somehow in my thoughts his mother ship is still riding shotgun up there in high orbit, our final defense and weapon of attack.

“Concentrate,” orders the colonel.

Ilseville is smaller than it seems from the ground. Our river is a tributary of a larger river that splits on the plain and loses itself in vast marshes beyond; the waterlogged terrain across which we attacked is simply a small corner of this. Clouds scuttle below us, obscuring the view. I’m not sure what I’m meant to be watching, because the city looks peaceful and the marshes are empty.