David Gunn - Death's head

“What?” I demand.

Shil looks away.

“Sir…” Haze wants to say something.

I nod to a patch of earth next to me.

“Please,” he says. “Not here.”

My shrug says it all. Where then? All hell is ready to break loose and this is the spot we have to hold for at least an hour, until we fall back to a trench we need to hold for eight times longer. Neither foxhole nor trench has the slightest real value; their worth in lives is completely arbitrary, utterly artificial.

Where exactly does he want me to go?

Maybe over there, sir? says Haze.

And in my gullet the kyp spasms for the first time in weeks, and I’m on my knees vomiting before I’ve even realized his voice was in my head. Ion is staring across from his foxhole, as are the Vals.

“Implant malfunction.” My voice is little more than a croak.

The Vals look sympathetic. “Want us to cut it out?”

I touch my throat, indicating the kyp’s position. “Better not,” I say, trying for a grin.

Ion is looking at me strangely. “I scanned you yesterday,” he says. “In the bar. I only got the arm and some weirdshit at the base of your spine.”

Base of my spine?

“Soft implant,” I tell him.

Now I’ve got Franc and the others looking at me weirdly as well. Soft implants are illegal, punishable by death. Real death, the kind that wipes out all copies. Assuming you’re rich enough to make copies in the first place, which I’m not and probably never will be.

“It’s a long story.”

And it’s a story I’m not going to tell. The three days in Farlight while the kyp bedded in are still real enough to mess with my dreams.

You can hear me?

Yes. I can hear you…

I can take down that high fighter. The boy is podgy, fevered, and nervous. With his sweat-stained uniform and Death’s Head patch he looks like a kid caught dressing up; the others are starting to look like soldiers.

You know, he says. Don’t you?

I nod. How did you get involved with Franc?

My family owned her. Haze looks embarrassed, and I realize how little I understand about his world. We played together as children…

All of this is wrong, he adds. The war, people starving, people owning each other or paying others to fight for them. People like you and me. Haze wonders if he can say it, decides he can.

We shouldn’t exist.

Oh fuck…

I have a rebel NewlyMade, camped out in a foxhole a hundred yards from a landing jetty, with a battle about to begin. I wonder to myself how I’d explain it to the Aux if I just shot him here and now.

You don’t need to, says Haze. Order me, and I’ll do it myself.

Whose side are you really on?

His gaze flicks to Franc, Neen, and Shil. There’s no hesitation in his voice whatsoever. Theirs, he says.

“Go talk to the Vals,” I tell him.

“About what?” he asks, answering aloud.

“The high fighters.” I stare pointedly at the slab he carries. “Tell them how your slab can help overcome the shield.”

Vaulting from the foxhole, Haze sprints across sodden grass, throwing himself into the ditch behind the rocket launcher. Both Vals look surprised.

“What do you want?”

Can I really hear their words from where I squat? Or does Val 9’s question filter into my head through the kyp? It’s impossible to say.

“The high fighter’s going to attack again.”

“Obviously.”

“I can stop it.”

“You can stop it from attacking?”

Haze shakes his head. “I can unlock the codes,” he says. “Then you can shoot it down.” He’d say more but Val 9’s got him by the throat and she’s looking at Val 11, her eyes calculating the odds of this being likely.

“You’d better not be lying.”

“I’m not,” insists Haze.

He hunkers down with his slab, fingers flicking over the screen as his gaze dances among the high fighter, the rocket launcher in front of him, and the two Vals, who are watching, hard-eyed and suspicious.

“It’s about to roll,” he says.

The plane does.

“Take it before it reaches the river,” says Haze.

“We decide when to fire.”

“No.” Haze shakes his head. “You have to take it before it reaches the river. Unless that’s too hard a shot?”

Both Vals look like they want to get their hands back around his neck. Climbing out of their foxhole, they start to ratchet the wheel, raising the barrels; everyone can see it’s going to be a long shot.

A second later Haze climbs out of the foxhole after them.

“What’s he doing?” asks Shil, sounding worried.

Franc looks at me and smiles strangely. “Helping the Vals.”

“The Vals take help from no one,” says Ion. So I shrug and point and he shrugs in his turn. Stranger things in love and war, and we’re seeing the side effects of both of those.

The high fighter is closer now, a delta wing so thin it’s near invisible when seen from the front. A dot and the slash of a line, fire waterfalling behind it.

“Now,” Haze says. “Now.”

He’s almost shouting.

The two Vals hesitate for a second, and then one of them yanks a lever and all eight rockets fire at once. It’s wasteful and they’ve depleted a tenth of their weapons in one go, but it’s probably our best chance of making this work.

Smoke trails zip toward the incoming plane. It’s right around now our rockets should self-destruct, leaving the high fighter to fly unharmed through smoke and shrapnel. Only our rockets are still closing.

“Fuck,” says Ion, sounding genuinely impressed.

“Five, four, three, two, one…” The Vals are counting aloud. When the explosion comes, they hug each other and then punch Haze in the shoulder, which seems to be about as close to affection as either one is likely to get.

“Watch,” Haze says.

What’s left of the plane is hurtling toward the jetties on the far side of the river. An area used for mooring if the city gate quays are already jammed with incoming cargo. It hits smack-on, exploding in a ball of flame, then expands into black smoke and an even bigger ball of fire as the fuel it carries ignites.

Vals 9 and 11, and Haze, are almost blown off their feet.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Ion’s saying it like a mantra. Like he doesn’t believe what just happened, which make two of us, or thirty, or three hundred, or however many there are still crouched in foxholes in front of the city gates. Haze would know, but he’s busy scraping mud from his face and turning bright red as the Vals forget the prejudices of a lifetime and try to hug him…

“Haze,” I shout. “Get yourself back here.”

He shoots me a grateful glance.

We’ve taken down their batwings and we’ve knocked out a high fighter, something that just shouldn’t be possible. In the afterglow I’m pretty sure that Ion, at least, is aware the best has just been.

All the same, he’s laughing and joking with his men. Passing obscene comments up and down the line, so jokes and insults run from the point of the arrow up one side, back down again, and up the other side. We’re in a gap between the softening-up and the real attack, and a silence settles across the line as everyone finally begins to realize that.

The earpiece Ion is wearing crackles.

“Sure,” he says. “Understood.”

“Outpost?”

“Yeah. They’ve reached the last bend in the river.” He lowers his voice. “We’re facing Silver Fist.”

A lot of mercenaries think the entire Death’s Head should be out here with us, but the Death’s Head are kept for when they’re really needed, and the mercenaries are the ones who’ve been offered passage off planet, should they live. All the same, Silver Fist isn’t good; they’re elite. The Uplift’s answer to OctoV’s Death’s Head, unless it’s the other way around.