David Gunn - Death's head

He stands over me.

He’s as tall as I am, probably taller. Seven braids stream back from his skull. He’s the most senior silverhead I’ve yet seen.

“That’s illegal technology,” he says, kicking my gun across the floor.

“And you can fuck off, too,” says the gun, then goes dark as all its diodes switch off at once.

The silverhead smiles. “This is where you die.”

And in the back of my mind, a skull grins.

“Not here,” I say. “And not yet.”

His reply is a steel-capped boot to my guts. Another kick like that and something will rupture. So I curl myself tight, trying to make it look like instinct while fighting the very instinct that makes me want to curl up into a ball in the first place. It’s a tough trick.

The next kick catches me in the ribs, breaking a couple. The seven-braid smiles at the crack and draws back his boot for a final go. It’s the moment for which I’ve been waiting. Another rib breaks, and my gut muscles barely survive the blow, but I reach right around his ankle and grip the toe of his boot, then pull…

A single twist locks him into the present.

His foot dislocates before his knee, but it’s a close call, and his knee only gives to stop his hip from dislocating entirely. The seven-braid falls, because there’s nothing else he can do, and I slam my elbow hard into his throat. I’m not sure what all those silver torso tubes do but I rip them out of his body anyway.

And then I remove his head without bothering to check if he’s dead first. It hangs from my fingers by all seven braids and leaves a trail of blood as I make my way downstairs and out into the street.

“Wow,” says the gun when we’re clear of the house. “Five broken ribs, a smashed shoulder, and a ruptured spleen. Cheap at half the price.”

I get the feeling it’s just being kind.

My feet are heavy as lead, it’s cold, and the temptation to lie down in the snow for a few minutes is overwhelming. So overwhelming that the gun curses me from one side of a deserted square to the other.

And I’m back at the pumping station before an explosion two blocks away tells me someone has just opened a bedroom door they should have left closed.

“Kaboom,” says the gun.

I have to agree.

I’m grinning, also bleeding and trying to climb a rusty metal ladder while holding the head of a self-elected god, not necessarily a good mix. It takes me longer than I’d like, but I manage it anyway, and then make my way home.

The head goes in a bucket, because I’m fed up with the mess. The food, taken from the kitchen of the first house, goes into the larder, leaving me with what I’ve been putting off.

Seeing how bad my wound really is.

My uniform is half glued to my side with dried blood, and my jacket peels back reluctantly, although water helps the cloth to pull free. I can see splintered ribs and torn muscle, a pulsing artery, and sinew that looks like it should go somewhere. Straightening the ribs makes me wince.

“Leave it.” Shil’s voice is fierce. “Just fucking leave it.” She steps up beside me and turns me toward her flashlight. “What happened?”

“Someone shot me.”

She sighs. “Obviously. Who?”

“A silverhead…”

My answer stops her in her tracks. “Where was he?”

“Into the outer city. I killed three Enlightened, plus several humans. One of them could have been me.”

“Believe me, sir,” says Shil. “No one could be you.”

“I’m fine.”

“No,” she says. “You’re not.” Without being asked, she banks a fire, finds me a chair, and pours me a glass of brandy. A moment later she has a second glass of brandy mixed with two glasses of water, and she’s heating the whole lot in a saucepan over the fire.

“I can do that myself.”

She stops midstride, then squats in front of me. Her face is hard, and something unforgiving has fixed itself behind her eyes. “You don’t want me in this group, do you?”

I shrug. It hurts.

“What did I do?” she demands. “To make you hate me?”

Twist away from my caress, offer yourself as the price for demoting your brother, hate me yourself… There are a dozen things I could say and all of them would be half true, and none of them would be honest.

I know the real answer.

It goes back to those locked gates, the high fighter seeding the ghetto with fire, and how Shil and Franc feel about our militia’s slaughter by the Silver Fist. Franc’s better at keeping her disgust hidden, but then she’s been a possession most of her life and that has to be good training.

“Listen,” I say. “There was nothing I could do.”

“Yes there was, sir. You could have stayed here. Not gone into the outer city.” She thinks I’m ignoring her question.

“I mean the gates…”

“Sir, now’s not the time.”

“Yes,” I say, “it fucking is. So I’ll say it, and you’ll listen.”

She waits.

“The code to lock the gate was broadcast by a hiSat. A hiSat dumped up there by General Jaxx’s mother ship. I could no more break its coding than could Haze. Even the colonel was powerless to stop what happened next.”

“Why, sir?” says Shil.

She’s asking why the general had the gates locked in the first place. Shil already understands why none of us could break it open, even if we’d dared try to disobey General Jaxx’s orders.

“To save food, maybe to save ammunition. Because he knew the mercs would fight to the end once they knew they were trapped. God knows I’m not the general…”

“You could be,” she says. “One day. Everyone’s afraid of you. No one ever knows what you’re going to do next.”

“You’re not afraid of me.”

“Me?” she says. “I’m fucking terrified.”

The water is hot and the alcohol stings. Shil keeps her mixture just below boiling, which is ninety-six degrees Centigrade on this planet. And when she’s dressed the wound, she pulls the saucepan from the fire.

“This is going to hurt,” she tells me, not sounding as upset as she should be by the idea.

She’s right, it does. Although she tries not to wince as I grip her hand. “What were you doing anyway?” she demands, folding her injured fingers into the crook of her arm when she finally gets them back.

“Killing silverheads.”

“Yeah,” she says. “You said. The question is why?”

It’s a night for the truth.

“Wake Haze,” I say. “Ask him how he feels.”

Shil does. She wakes the others as well, sending Neen for a doctor. He goes without question, despite the fact that he outranks her and she’s his sister. Franc comes down, takes one look at the bread and cheese I stole from the three-braid’s kitchen, and smiles.

“Thank you,” she says.

The house still has furniture to burn and we can always hack up doors when that’s gone, so I tell Franc to bank up the fire and make some toast. I’m hungry; hunting does that to me.

And then I wait, second-guessing whether Neen will return before Haze can be coaxed up from his cellar. My coffee goes cold and the griddle gets hot enough for Franc to make toast for everyone. Our kitchen smells of bread and wood smoke when its door finally bangs open and Neen comes in, leading a tired-looking old woman.

She halts, smells the air. Envy is obvious in her eyes.

“How the other half live.”

“He stole it.” Shil’s voice is fierce. “Got half killed doing it.” She speaks in an accent the old woman recognizes. If not from this city, then from this system.

“Took it from a silverhead, ” says a voice in the doorway. The final word is laden with scorn, although mostly that’s bravado. Haze looks like shit-his face is haggard, a bloody sheet is wrapped around his skull, and sweat drips from his jaw-but his eyes are clear.