David Gunn - Maximum Offence

‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘Permission to speak.’

Not sure where he got that phrase from. But he uses it now and then, when he’s worried his question is going to piss me off.

‘Go ahead.’

‘About the colonel-’

He knows it is the wrong thing to say before he’s even finished. Must be the way I go still and stare at him. ‘What about him?’

‘Sir,’ Neen says. ‘Did he . . . Did he say why we’re here?’

Neen sees my sour grin and knows he’s just saved his skin.

‘We’re looking for a missing U/Free observer, apparently.’ I got that apparently from General Jaxx. He tags it onto the end of his sentences.

‘A U/Free?’ Neen looks shocked. ‘Who would kidnap a U/Free?’

‘If he was kidnapped,’ I say. ‘Could have just fallen off a cliff . . .’ Although that doesn’t explain what a U/Free observer was doing crawling around Hekati in the first place.

Dusk comes early, and with it that wind to hurl dirt in our faces. It is as if, for an hour or so, the whole habitat wants to reject us. We go from survivable temperature to sub-zero in the time it takes to find a wall tall enough to make a windbreak for our tents.

By the time the last tent is up, the wind is already dropping. We will know next time, and find ourselves a wall in advance. Because the whole habitat is a maze of the bloody things. Unfortunately, most of the walls aren’t high enough to trip a child. They are like memories.

A map of a city scrubbed back to ground level .

I don’t say this. Haze does, but he’s full of stuff like that. All the same, the rest of us know what he means. Hekati is what happens if you cram seven million people onto a ninety-mile-long strip around the inside of a ring world, then get rid of the people and let their city crumble to dust.

Oh yeah, and build a few huts on top of the ruins.

The wall we are sheltering behind is stained with age. Neen claims it’s recycled asteroid. Shil thinks it’s ancient stonefoam blocks. I don’t give a fuck what it is so long as it stops my pup tent blowing away in the night.

After a minute of listening to them argue, I tell them to shut up and go do something useful. So Shil lights a fire, using dry wood to keep the smoke down, and Neen collects firewood.

Finding a spring, Franc sniffs the water and sips a little.

When it doesn’t taste sour, she scoops a mouthful and drinks that as well. If she’s not rolling around in agony in ten minutes I will let the others drink it too . . . As for Rachel, she’s on top of an outcrop behind us. A building once, I guess. Now it just looks natural.

Rachel has night sights and thermal imaging on that Z93z of hers. She might as well use them.

‘How many?’ I ask when she comes running back.

‘Five people for certain, sir.’

‘Silver Fist?’ If they are, we have a problem.

The problem won’t be that they are Silver Fist. We’ve killed half a dozen of those already today. We can kill five more easily enough. No, the problem will be they have found us. That means spy cameras somewhere high in the habitat’s roof. And I don’t like the idea of being watched from above.

‘Well?’ I say to Rachel.

‘Not Silver Fist, sir.’

Imagine a long strip of mountain with a valley floor to the side, and a long shoreline parallel to that. In daylight, the sea seems to stretch out for ever. That is only because the opposite wall is painted blue. Walk straight ahead, along the shore, the valley or a mountain path, and eventually you will come back to where you started.

That’s ring worlds for you.

A hundred million tons of rubble to create ninety miles of valley, with four central spokes rising through the roof and meeting at the mirror hub in the ring’s middle. We saw cities when we came in. Although they’re more towns, really. The biggest is half a mile away. It has wooden walls and earth roofs. And I took my best look at it fifteen minutes before the wind came up and grit started to thicken the air.

‘Reckon they’re hunting us?’

She nods.

‘They know where we are yet?’

Rachel shakes her head. ‘Doubt it, sir.’

We have two choices for our U/Free’s captors. Assuming he didn’t just fall down a cliff. Either they’re illegal prospectors. Or they’re the descendants of Hekati’s original miners, now grouped into warring tribes. Seemingly three hundred years of being locked in an oversized child’s toy does that to you.

Well, it does according to Haze.

‘Let them come,’ I tell Rachel.

Saluting, she turns to go and freezes as I tell her to stop.

‘You’re wearing a helmet.’

‘Sir?’

‘Next time use its comms system.’

One of the strangers is taller than the rest, muscled across the shoulders and carries two knives to everyone else’s one. An ancient rifle is slung across his broad back. He might have white hair, cropped tight to his skull, and wear a stinking goatskin jacket, but he’s clear-eyed, and he counts our tents as he comes into the camp.

I watch him do it. Not hard to work out who’s boss.

‘Get Colonel Vijay,’ I tell Neen.

Whatever Neen says works because the colonel crawls from his tent, zips it carefully behind him and sits by the fire. All right, he refuses to look at the rest of us and he keeps his arms wrapped tightly round his knees, but at least he is here.

‘Our leader,’ my sergeant says.

He might as well be speaking gibberish. So I try city tongue and that doesn’t work either. On my orders, Haze tries machine cult. When the man still looks blank, I try traveller because it is the oldest language of all.

The man nods. ‘I am Pavel,’ he says. ‘Caudillo of the O’Cruz.’

It seems five armies, ejercitox in his terms, came together to defeat another thirteen and created a force that took on all comers, until one caudillo ruled a quarter of the habitat. Doesn’t matter the average size of an ejercitox seems to be less than fifty men. This group are the O’Cruz Itcific . It means O’Cruz unbeaten . They have remained unbeaten for three centuries. Having nodded, to show I am impressed by this history lesson, I introduce myself.

‘I’m Sven,’ I tell him. ‘Sub-caudillo of the Aux.’ Maybe my height convinces Pavel of my claim. Unless it’s the glint of my arm in the firelight.

‘Tell him who I am,’ whispers Colonel Vijay.

Nodding at the colonel, I say, ‘Our caudillo.’

‘He looks weak.’

Unfortunately, that is true.

‘His family are very important.’ That is also true. No one gets to be a colonel in the Death’s Head at his age without serious backing. Back in Farlight, backing translates as money or political power.

‘Ahh,’ says Pavel.

Families have meaning for the O’Cruz. A fact I file away. Know a people’s strength and know their weaknesses. And, most important of all, know how to turn one into the other.

‘Where are his guards?’ Pavel asks, looking puzzled.

I gesture at the Aux.

‘Women,’ he says. ‘Children.’

‘Who have slaughtered thousands between them.’

Pavel’s eyes widen.

To Neen, I say, ‘Hand him your cup.’ And to Rachel, who is out in the darkness, ‘You’re on.’

A shot spills Neen’s coffee onto the dirt.

To make the hit, Rachel has to slide her shot between Pavel’s elbow and his stinking jacket. We let the O’Cruz caudillo glare round him, scowling as he tries to work out if the bullet came from an outcrop above. That is twice the distance his weapon can manage. Jerking his chin towards Rachel’s hiding place, Pavel says: ‘From there. Yes?’

I nod. And that’s when it all goes wrong.

As Rachel yells a warning through our helmet speakers, Neen scrambles to his feet. Jacking the bolt on his rifle, he flicks on his searchlight. Shil and Franc are doing the same. It’s one of those moments when everyone knows there’s danger, but no one knows where from.