David Gunn - Death's head

“Fuck off,” says the sniper.

So I do, all of ten paces.

This takes me to the very edge of the laser fencing. There’s no real reason for the corral the Silver Fist construct, because we’re too shattered to think about escaping, and there’s nowhere for us to go anyway.

The silence is what gets me.

Guns and rockets, mortar rounds and snatches of small-arms fire have become so much a soundtrack to my life that their absence shocks me more than any noise. Only when some guard shoots a straggler does my day feel vaguely normal. When I mention this to the sniper she stares at me strangely. This may be why she won’t look at me anymore.

We stink, all of us.

Shit, sweat, death, and defeat, who knew they smelled so similar?

I miss my gun and its arrogance. We do what we do, we do it well, and no one else comes close. Maybe its arrogance merely matches my own.

The next day the sniper walks for an hour almost unaided, and then tries to sit. Hooking my arm under hers, I drag her to her feet and make her keep walking. Her punches are so weak they don’t even bruise me. Around this time I remember to ask her name. Rachel.

“Well, fucking walk,” I tell Rachel.

Anger’s good. It gets her through to the evening.

Mornings turn to afternoons and get swallowed by the night. But the successive nights do little to dampen Rachel’s misery. One time, a couple of guards come by with flashlights in their hands and rape on their minds. A single look at the state of her is enough to make them go elsewhere.

Come dawn, there’s another woman crying and a man dead, his head smashed and blood crusting his mouth. A boy offers to help bury him, but we move off before the job is done.

Anyone else would have dropped Rachel by now, and I know the Silver Fist are placing bets on how long I can keep going. Most of them have already lost, which probably explains the viciousness of their passing kicks.

Night comes around again, the eighth…at least I think it’s the eighth. Tents go up and the enemy eat, leaving only a handful of guards to erect the laser fencing that keeps us secure. Our hunger makes their job easier by the day.

“Get up,” I tell Rachel when dawn arrives.

“Piss off.”

I slap her so hard I have to carry her for the rest of that day, although she regains consciousness around noon. The Silver Fist who are still in on the bet think it’s hilarious.

Personally, I hope to see them all dead.

The next morning is much the same. I want Rachel to get up; she wants me to fuck off and die…Sheer obstinacy stops me from leaving her. Rachel’s alive and she’s bloody well going to stay that way.

“Stand,” I say, twisting my fingers into her hair.

Shadows shift behind me, and I turn expecting to see a guard. Only it’s someone else entirely.

“Hi,” says Shil. “Still relying on your charm?”

Having sworn loudly enough to make a Silver Fist look around, I stamp my anger into silence and take a deep breath, then another.

“All right,” says Shil. “You’ve made your point. You’re really fucking pleased to see me.”

“I told you to stay behind.”

“No. You said I wasn’t Aux, remember?”

“Yeah.”

“So,” she says. “Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do anyway?” She glares past me to where Rachel sits. “Do you want help with her or not?”

Around us the defeated are picking up their packs, struggling into sodden boots and forcing themselves to their feet. A few are glaring in undisguised hatred at the Silver Fist, but most are too hollow-eyed to care.

“As long as it doesn’t void their bet,” I say.

Shil looks at me strangely. “You’ve been close to dropping her,” she says, “for a couple of days now.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Hoisting Rachel between us, we set off in silence along a track that barely qualifies as a road, and as the sun reaches the high point of its journey-roughly as high as a tree on the horizon, had any trees been able to grow in this wilderness-right around then Neen and Franc appear behind us, position themselves on either side of Rachel, and release us from her burden.

“Fantastic,” I say. “Don’t tell me…”

“Yeah,” says Neen. “Good to see you, too.”

He’s taller than I remember, even thinner. His shaggy mop has been cropped to the skull and he’s back in uniform, complete with Death’s Head patch made from alligator skin. So are the others, I realize, even Maria. Only Haze wears militia uniform, with a fat cap pulled down tight over his ears.

“How are you handling the…”

He glares at me, almost tripping over his feet as he turns his attention from the road. “By not thinking about it.”

Our column is now a third of the length it was when it set out from Ilseville. No lenz line this road to record us. Our surrender was news; our march to the coast at Mica is a given. At most a few families turn out from their farms to watch us pass. They look like everyone else on this planet: badly dressed, damp, and cold.

A woman gives Franc soup and is sworn at by a guard.

She swears back and three men from her village suddenly appear behind her, which is interesting. The Uplifted might hold this planet, but it seems they still have hearts and minds to gather in.

Sipping from the cup, Franc smiles her thanks. When I look again, she’s given the cup to Haze.

That night we make a fire from scraps of wood and huddle around it while Rachel tells her story. It’s depressingly familiar. A daughter when she should have been a son, she fills a quota for conscripts that her brother is still too young to fill for himself. Her biggest mistake is having proved useful with a gun.

“Only,” says Rachel, “I’m not going to swap sides again.” It takes me a moment to realize what she means.

“You were…?”

“Uplift militia, before I joined this lot.”

“So were we all,” says Franc. I’m still considering this casual revelation of treason, when Franc adds, “And we’re not going to keep swapping until we’re dead. We plan to escape.”

Rachel looks interested. “How are you intending to do that?”

“No idea,” says Franc. “Shil thought Sven might know.”

Laughing is probably the wrong response, but since the alternative is swearing at them for a bunch of idiots it’s the best I can offer.

Seven cargo ships lie at anchor in Mica Harbor. They’re old, badly maintained, and rusting. Oxide inhibitor has been spray-gunned across their sides and left unpainted, a tattered flag flaps from each stern, and ropes run from high on deck to rusting bollards on the jetty below.

From where we stand to the headland opposite is five miles. Marching around the fjord’s edge would mean navigating a shoreline twisty enough to be almost fractal. We might walk it in a week if we were lucky. So we’re about to make an eight-hundred-mile journey in those ships, down the coast from here to Bhose.

There’s only one problem.

Six of these ships are not going to arrive.

It’s looking at the last of them that tells me this. Whoever spray-gunned the Winter Wind with oxide inhibitor was wasting his time, because it’s obvious that the steel was already fine. In fact, the vessel is newer than the other six by several years, if not decades. We’re meant to look at these and see seven rust buckets. And from the swearing of the prisoners around me that’s exactly what most of them are seeing.

“What’s wrong?” asks Shil.

“I’m not sure yet, but something’s badly wrong. We’re going to need weapons.”

Haze and Franc glance at each other, then look away.

“What?” I demand, calling them on it.