David Gunn - Death's head

Maybe it’s their backstory, but Franc, the shaven-headed woman with the evil grin and a belt full of knives, turns anxious every time Haze speaks to her.

It would be funny, if it wasn’t sad.

We’re sitting in the kitchen of our house. Maria is boiling water for coffee, for washing, and to dress the wounds we didn’t even realize we had until we made it back to warmth and safety.

Neen has taken a slug through his shoulder, just below his left arm. It’s a clean shot that shows daylight on both sides. I’m not sure he realizes how lucky he is. Maria’s fussing, Shil’s doing her best not to be jealous, and Haze has just told Franc that he’ll protect her.

“From what?” I ask. “What are you expecting to happen?”

“Nightmares.”

Maria and Shil both flash the sign against the evil eye. Maria, I can understand, but Shil…

“What, sir?” she demands, seeing me look at her.

“How can you believe that stuff?”

“Sir, how can you not?”

She’s got using sir as an insult down to a fine art. It doesn’t help my temper that she probably learned it from me.

“Tonight,” says Haze, “is going to be grim.”

“You know what they’re planning?” asks Neen. The speed with which he asks this reveals his desire for a rapid change of subject.

“Yes,” says Haze. “I believe so.”

“A psychic attack?” asks Maria.

He shakes his head, not bothering to hide his smile. “That’s a myth,” he says. “They’ll use gas. The wind is from the marshes. The Enlightened won’t want to waste that.”

“I should tell the colonel.”

“Tell him now,” says Haze, glancing at his slab.

Colonel Nuevo is drunk. One of the great advantages of being the most senior officer in an occupied city is that no one is going to point this out, at least not to your face. The other is that when you decide to go walkabout, because you’re bored and have nothing better to do, half a dozen officers and bodyguards are going to ride shotgun like fancy shadows behind you.

“Thought I’d find you here,” he says when I open the door. “Was going to send for you, but…”

But what never materializes. Instead Colonel Nuevo wanders into my house and hesitates in the hall. “Where is everybody?”

“We’re in the kitchen.”

He follows me down a corridor, the sound of his cavalry boots echoing off the walls, his posse of silver braid following along behind.

“Bread,” he exclaims, and Franc freezes, a freshly baked loaf in her hands. Everyone else jumps to their feet, although Neen is marginally slower than the rest of us.

“You’re wounded.”

Neen shrugs, realizes this isn’t polite, and says, “Minor, sir. Pretty clean, went straight through.”

It’s the right answer.

Without being asked, Maria puts a fat slice of freshly baked bread in front of the colonel, then adds a saucer of oil and watches him demolish the lot.

“How did it go?” asks the colonel. He’s talking to me. A major and two captains are waiting to see what I’ll reply.

“No worse than I’d expect.”

He smiles. “I’m letting the mercenaries go.”

“So I would imagine, sir.”

“You want to go with them?”

I shake my head.

Something ghostly crosses his face. “Sleep well,” he says. “Come and see me in the morning…”

The ship carrying Ion and his crew explodes when it passes the first ball buster. Haze, my gun, and I see this as a fireball high in the night sky, like a new star burning over Ilseville. As ash and metal fragments rain down on the city, the SIG says, “Glad we’re not on that.”

I can only agree. “Silver Fist?”

“No,” says Haze. “Us.”

We’re both wearing full combat armor and breathing a mix from canisters fixed to our belts. The city is spread out beneath us, a jumble of streets and squares, all poisoned by the psychotropic gas that has been carried in on the night wind.

People howl like animals, and marsh foxes scream like murdered children. I’ve got the Aux locked indoors, in the house below. All have injected themselves with battlefield opiates in an attempt to hold their nightmares at bay.

Except for Haze, obviously. He’s on the roof with me, and we’re talking about how to handle what comes next. He’s going to be an even, a thinker. Two buds have already broken through his scalp and most of his hair is gone, probably still tangled into the drain of the shower where I found him an hour ago.

Somehow I’m going to have to find a way to tell Colonel Nuevo about this that makes it sound good. And I’m worried about the colonel’s own capacity to deal with the dreams.

Although, as it turns out, I needn’t have bothered.

When I reach his HQ next morning Colonel Nuevo is washing vomit from his naked chest and shouting at his orderly for a clean uniform. The orderly looks the way his superior deserves to feel, but obviously doesn’t. It seems Colonel Nuevo drank himself into such a stupor that no dreams had the strength to infest his sleep.

“Bloody useless man,” the colonel tells me. So I repeat what I originally told him about the gas.

“Jacket,” shouts the colonel, ignoring me.

Bringing him a dress jacket, the orderly lays it out on the bed. Before the colonel can object, he says, “It’s all you have left.”

This is a Colonel Nuevo I haven’t seen before.

“You know what’s going to happen today?” asks the colonel when his sleeves are straight and he’s managed the braid fastenings on his own.

I shake my head.

“Probably just as well. Take your auxiliaries and establish a new base by the cathedral. Inside the second wall…” He hesitates. “Who was that girl who gave me the bread?”

“Maria,” I tell him. “Our maid.”

He snorts. “Take Maria with you,” he says, and then he tells me why.

Maria and Neen are in bed, their faces hollow and eyes unable to meet mine. Enough of the nightmares crept past the opiates to ruin their sleep, though ruined sleep is cheap compared with the price the gas extracted from some in this city.

Walking back from the colonel’s HQ produced open windows and broken bodies on the streets below.

“Get up,” I tell Neen. “Pack only what you need, plus your weapons, and be downstairs in two minutes. That goes for Maria as well.”

I give Franc the same message and go looking for Shil. She’s in the bathroom half naked, washing under her arms with cold water from a basin.

Her body is as good as I remember.

“Get out,” she says. When I don’t, she hurls a glass mug.

“We leave in two minutes,” I tell her. “If you’re not ready, we go without you.”

“What?”

“Two minutes. Get your weapons, get dressed, carry some food.”

“Wait,” she demands. “Are you okay?”

Punching a hole through her door is probably the wrong answer, and I don’t mean to do it. Well, maybe I do…

“No,” I say. “I’m not fucking okay. The ship carrying Ion and his friends exploded last night.”

Shil gets it instantly, her brain as quick as her tongue. If Ion’s ship was taken out by Uplifted guns I’d be upset, but not like this. And since it probably wasn’t an accident, that leaves only one other option. No code was carried to unlock the ball busters. The mercenaries were betrayed.

“Colonel Nuevo?”

“More like General Jaxx. Probably planned it before we even landed…And now we’re falling back to the inner city.”

“All of us?”

“Very much doubt it.”

I pack my weapons in a cold anger that blows through the house like an arctic wind. Even Neen stays out of my way. They’re waiting in line when I hit the hall a minute or so later.