David Gunn: Maximum Offence

Soon everyone is waiting on what will happen next. And their expectation makes my attacker clumsy. He jabs so obviously it has to be a feint. As his gaze flicks right, I know what’s going to happen.

He waits for me to begin a block before switching hands, smiling at his own brilliance. Then his brain is playing catch-up, because Lisa’s knife is deep in his belly and I’m dragging it upwards. A single rip opens him from groin to breastbone and a tumble of guts slides to the floor.

Aptitude screams.

Lisa’s more practical. She opens a window.

You can say what you like about the girls from the barrio below Calinda Gap but they’ve seen it all before, and probably twice. Tossing a blanket over the twitching corpse, my bar manager Angelique nods to a boy behind the counter. He can drag it out later.

‘Boss,’ says my sergeant. ‘What about rat face?’

Van Zill looks less smug with Neen’s revolver to his head.

‘Take rat face outside,’ I say. ‘Shoot him.’

‘ Sven . . . ! ‘

No need to ask who that is.

‘A week ago,’ I tell Aptitude, ‘a man refused to pay protection to this piece of shit. What do you think happened to his twelve-year-old daughter?’

Aptitude is fifteen.

She doesn’t like my question.

Turning back to Neen, I say, ‘Take him outside. Make sure he knows what happens if he ever comes back.’

Our glorious capital is built in the caldera of an old volcano, and smog traps heat and makes the air hard to breathe. Corpses rot quickly here and large ones rot faster than small ones. Don’t know why, but it’s true. Lisa ends up helping the boy behind the bar to drag the body out back. Then fetches ice to keep it fresh until Angelique can arrange collection.

‘Do I close up?’ Angelique asks.

‘No way.’ I shake my head. ‘We stay open.’

The music goes back on. We offer a round of cold beers for everyone on the house. A couple of cargo captains who were going to call it a night change their minds and head upstairs with three of the local girls.

A technician watches them go, summons up his courage and follows. He has two blondes in tow, and I’m not sure he looked closely before grabbing their wrists. No doubt he’ll discover soon enough that one is a boy.

‘Chill some cachaca ,’ I tell Lisa. ‘Make sure our customers have a night to remember.’

Drunks talk.

That thug will become a giant, his knife a razor-edged sabre, my own moves unstoppable and insanely vicious . . . Our reputation will grow. That’s good, because tomorrow sees me, my sergeant and the rest of the Aux present ourselves for duty. I need that reputation to keep Aptitude safe until we get home.

‘All done,’ says Neen, rubbing his fists.

‘Good. Anything I should know?’

Neen hesitates.

‘What?’

‘Told the little shit to pay us from now on.’

I grin. It’s a good call.

‘How much?’

‘Twenty per cent,’ says Neen. ‘Straight off the top, no deductions. Last day of each month. No exceptions, no excuses . . .’

This is a farm boy, an ex-militia conscript who should have been dead months back. Would have been if I hadn’t taken over his troop. I wonder where he got the idea. Then I see his sister behind him and know exactly where she thinks he did. Shil is scowling, but that’s nothing new. Shil’s always scowling. We have history.

‘Problem?’

‘No, sir,’ says Shil.

‘Good . . .’ I look round the bar. ‘Get drunk,’ I tell Neen. ‘Get laid. Acquire a hangover. We ship out tomorrow.’

Neen grins. ‘It that an order, sir?’

His sister sighs.

Hinges Creek and Angelique pokes her head round the door.

‘Sven,’ she says and disappears. Might be the fact I’m standing naked in the middle of my bedroom. Must be the gun in my hand.

‘What?’

Reappearing, she nods as a towel goes round my waist and the SIG-37 goes back in its holster. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘but she won’t . . .’ Who won’t is obvious, because a girl slides past Angelique and looks around.

‘Pre-fab construction,’ she says. ‘Early-Octovian. Original walls and door. Original electrics from the look of it . . . You do realize,’ she says, ‘this building was only meant to last five years?’

‘I like it.’

‘You would.’

Her nose wrinkles at the smell, but she catches herself quickly. And when she brushes past me to the open window, it could be to examine its sash cords. Because that is what she does.

‘Original fittings,’ she says.

Maybe she catches my irritation.

‘You don’t mind?’ she says.

‘Of course not.’

If she hears an edge to my voice, she doesn’t let it show. Anyway, going to the window doesn’t help with the smell because the air beyond the window stinks of dog shit, burning rubber and hydrocarbons from the landing fields outside. Where does she think the stench came from in the first place?

‘You really like it here?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

Angelique is looking between us. ‘You know each other?’

‘I’m sorry,’ says the girl. ‘Didn’t I say?’

‘No,’ Angelique says flatly. ‘You didn’t.’

Angelique might be blonde, generously built, free with her body, but she has the temper of a redhead, and it’s coming to the boil. I don’t need the argument, and I don’t need the complications an argument will bring.

‘Ms Osamu,’ I say, ‘may I introduce Angelique, my bar manager?’

They glare at each other.

‘Angelique, this is Paper Osamu, ambassador for the United Free to the Octovian Empire. Ms Osamu has full plenipotentiary status for this edge of the spiral arm.’

Angelique doesn’t know what it means either, but has enough brains to recognize it as trouble and best avoided. ‘She’s U/Free?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She’s U/Free.’

Paper Osamu smiles.

‘But . . .’ says Angelique, and gets no further.

My visitor looks a good year or two younger than Angelique, who is nineteen at most. Paper’s also wearing rags. They are undoubtedly expensive rags. Probably ripped from exotic silk by a famous U/Free artist and sewn together with strands of web from a spider that has been taught to shit silver. But they still look like rags to me. And if they look like rags to me, then they’re going to look like rags to Angelique, only more so . . .

The furthest she’s been from home is Maurizio Junction.

That’s eight streets away.

‘Coffee would be good,’ says Ms Osamu. She is looking at Angelique as she says this.

‘You’ll find it downstairs.’

Angelique shuts my door with enough of a slam to make the windows rattle and the U/Free ambassador laugh. ‘Are all your women so jealous?’

‘She’s not my women .’

‘Really?’ Paper Osamu looks at me.

‘All right. But only the once.’

‘You’re such children-’ Ms Osamu catches herself, apologizes. The U/Free are big on not being rude about others. They have laws about such things. Me? As far as I’m concerned, if you think someone’s a crawling heap of shit, you’re allowed to say so. Just don’t be surprised if they pull a knife on you.

Taking a piece of card from her pocket, Paper Osamu says, ‘Look . . . The general’s invited you to a breakfast he’s giving in my honour.’

I check both sides of the invitation.

‘Want me to read it?’

‘I can manage. My old lieutenant taught me.’

‘Bonafonte deMax?’

It’s my turn to stare.

‘I checked him out,’ she says. ‘At the general’s suggestion.’

We live in a city full of generals, empire ministers and senators. Also heads of the high clans, distant cousins of the emperor and trade lords. However, round here, if someone says the general they mean General Indigo Jaxx, commander of the Death’s Head and my ultimate boss.