David Gunn - Death's head

“Clean kill,” I tell him, clapping him on the shoulder. “No one can ask for more.” The darkness stays where it is, so I go find Haze.

“How far to go?”

Haze glitches and comes back frowning. “Up a floor, along a corridor.” He hesitates. “They’re setting up a belt-fed. You want me to help Neen take it?” The boy is shaking, really shaking. Whatever Haze is doing inside his head is obviously killing him.

It’s time we changed the rules.

“No,” I say. “Leave that to the others. I want you to jack their hiSat system and fix me an off-planet broadcast.”

“Who do you want to call, sir?”

“Everyone…”

He looks at me, puzzled.

“I want to spam the fucking galaxy,” I tell him. “It’s got to reach the U/Free. It’s got to reach OctoV. It’s sure as hell got to reach the Uplifted.”

Haze runs with the problem, his thoughts almost visible as he juggles his options and reaches a conclusion he doesn’t like. “It’s possible,” he says. “But I’ll have to uncloak you as well.”

“Works for me.”

“General Duza will be able to see you.”

“That’s the idea.” I grip his shoulders, focusing his attention. Something has just occurred to me. “You know when the Enlightened flick dimensions. How do they do it?”

He feeds the answer straight into my mind. Which fucks me over, because I don’t understand a single one of the concepts, until they begin to unravel and my mind scrabbles to keep up with what my unconscious now knows.

I’ve got levels to my abilities I didn’t even realize existed, and I hate this voodoo shit, always have. Give me a gun and give me an enemy and I’ll take it to the wire and beyond every time. This Uplift stuff hurts my head, literally.

“Is he okay?”

It’s Neen, standing next to me. We seem to be in a different bit of corridor and his rate of fire has slowed to the point that a Silver Fist sticks his rifle around a corner, begins firing, and decides to follow his weapon to see what’s happening.

Five different people burn him back to nothing.

“What about that belt-fed?”

Neen looks puzzled. “We killed it.” A while ago goes unstated.

“Okay,” I tell Haze. “Do it in five.”

Haze nods.

To Neen I say, “The command is yours.”

Neen wants to say something, only Haze is counting seconds down with his fingers and we hit zero before Neen can object. Angel or demon, I’m about to find out which…

This is Sven Tveskoeg, lieutenant with the Death’s Head, Obsidian Cross second class. Half an hour ago a ship commanded by General Duza sank six sister vessels carrying Octovian prisoners on their way to Bhose. I am a soldier, an ex-legionnaire; we expect death. But this was not an act of war, it was not even judicial execution, it was the murder of five thousand disarmed men and women.”

I double the figure on instinct.

“A simple check of overhead hiSats will reveal the truth. Unless, of course, these have mysteriously malfunctioned…I want to add something else. With me are fifteen survivors, the last living witnesses to this atrocity. We’ve broken out and armed ourselves. And this bit of the message is for the crew of the Winter Wind. Arm yourselves, because we’re going to kill every last one of you. And the least you gutless bastards can do is die with a weapon in your hands. Something you didn’t allow the bulk of your prisoners…”

Neen is staring at me wide-eyed; Shil has her hand over her mouth. Neither is concentrating on the corridor ahead.

“Do your fucking jobs,” I tell the two of them.

Their nods are the last thing I see before I vanish.

White light and static, molecules dance like smoke, and colors collapse into each other until all I’ve got is darkness. This was never going to be easy. Haze is like an echo in my mind and I realize he’s shielding me again.

You’re there, he says.

“I’m here,” I say.

The eleven-braid turns, her jaw dropping with shock. She’s tall, older than I expected, with flesh like weathered oak. This woman radiates power, and she’s fast.

She’s gone before I realize it, a blow from the side knocking me into a wall. She should have used a knife, not her fist, and the wall is gone, somewhere behind me, because I’m outside for the split second it takes me to be somewhere else.

Duza spins, glares at me.

Pulling the trigger, I unleash a blast that rips a wall out of the command center, revealing night winds and rain. As I turn, my SW SIG-37 clears the room of anything that might be human. It’s not even intentional.

I’m looking for Duza.

“Behind you,” says my gun.

A blast incinerates where I was standing. Only I’m not there, either, because I’m behind Duza nursing a burned hip.

Too slow, I hear my gun say.

Move faster.

As Duza turns at the voice I grab the first of her eleven braids. Electricity sears flesh and glistening bone is revealed where the skin of my palm should be. Swapping hands makes me drop the SW SIG-37, which swears viciously as it hits the floor. But changing hands is instinctive and so is wrapping Duza’s braid around my fingers. In the end she simply reaches up and rips the steel plait from her own head.

White light and static.

She’s waiting for me when I step through a wall, her pistol already raised. Several things happen simultaneously.

Duza says, “It finishes here.” But that’s the least of them.

When her finger tightens on the trigger, I hurl my dagger as hard as possible, straight into her face, and she really is as good a shot as people say. I know this because she vaporizes the blade midthrow. Carbon, chromium, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, silicon, and vanadium.

I taste it happen.

And I see it also, only I see it from behind her, which is where I’m now standing. And Duza is right: This is where the thing ends. Wrapping my fingers into a handful of braids, I yank back her head and feel the general flicker frantically as she tries to switch dimensions. Fear, pain, and my grip lock her into place for the few seconds it takes me to hack off her head with her own blade.

And it’s true: Her flesh really is hard as old oak.

“This thing you’ve got for knives,” says the gun when I pick it up again. “We need to talk about it sometime.”

“SIR?” the shout comes from Neen.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s me.”

“You can stop firing, sir,” he says. “We’ve done it.”

The Aux take one look at the severed head hanging from my hand and glance at one another. “You might want to lose that, sir,” says Neen.

I’m expecting a battle report, numbers lost and injured, what the Aux are doing to lock down any remaining guards or crew, but it’s obvious Neen’s mind is on other things. As are all their minds.

“Why?” I demand.

“Because,” says Haze, “we’re about to have visitors.”

Shil begins to straighten my uniform, then takes a look at my face and decides to leave it as it is. “Take the gun,” she suggests. “Although I’d keep it pointed at the floor.”

By now I know who is out there.

“How do I look?”

“Like shit.”

“That’s Like shit, sir… ”

She snaps a half-mocking salute, then lets her gaze flick to my burned hip. “You want me to battle-dress that first?”

“No,” I say. “It’ll keep.”

We go out together. Not just me and the Aux, but the whole crowd of us, right down to the girls originally chosen to keep the crew amused on their journey to Bhose. We carry a motley collection of daggers, pulse rifles, and pistols, although everyone is careful to keep their blades sheathed and their fingers well away from any firing buttons or triggers.