David Gunn - Maximum Offence

‘Something there,’ she says. ‘I mean, not really, but . . .’

‘Kill it,’ I say.

The bullet leaves her barrel at 3800 fps and crosses the valley before her target has time to realize she’s fired; although it’s probably luck that gives Rachel a head shot. As the braid flips backwards, his camouflage blanket slips.

And the Silver Fist open fire.

They have a machine gun set up on the river bed. It’s spitting bullets so fast that they must have two Silver Fist working the belt. Or maybe it’s only one. Because thirty seconds in the gun jams. And my team give it everything they’ve got. Bushes explode, stones fly and a tree beside the river bed turns to wood chip a hand’s breadth above the gravel before toppling sideways.

Whole clips empty in seconds.

Nitrocellulose.

If we had the supplies I’d let them burn off for the sheer hell of it. Instead, I jack the slide on my gun.

‘Oh yes,’ says the SIG.

It has wanted to do this for days.

Prefrag ceramic is messy but effective as fuck. Get caught by one and you become your own body weight in mince. Hiding behind something doesn’t help, hiding under something isn’t much better.

I put an over blast above where I think the belt-fed is sited.

‘And again,’ my gun says. So I bracket a couple of shots forward and back.

What looks like a piece of Silver Fist crawls towards our trench. If he had sense, he’d head in the other direction. As he crawls, more and more of him becomes visible. His camouflage blanket slipping free.

‘Head shot,’ I say. ‘Finish him.’

Rachel does.

‘And the others.’

Using her scope, she scans the river bed. Every thirty seconds or so she puts a shot into a whimpering sliver of someone. She does this so steadily my temper begins to improve. Until a bullet ricochets from the rock I’m hiding behind.

‘Another sniper,’ yells my gun.

‘Yeah,’ says Rachel. ‘We noticed.’

After a second, she sticks her head above the foxhole and ducks as a second shot cracks overhead. ‘He’s good,’ she says.

‘If he was good,’ I tell her, ‘you’d be dead.’

She looks at me.

‘Where is he?’ I demand.

‘On the right.’

‘Rachel . . . Where is he? ‘

Sticking up her head, she takes another look. It is rolling sideways that saves her life, because the next bullet hits where she was.

‘Not sure, sir.’

‘Right,’ I say. ‘This is how it’s going to work. I’m going to stand up and run for the trench. Their sniper is going to raise his head to take a shot and you’re going to blow it off for me.’

‘ Sir ,’ she says, ‘ I can’t see him .’

‘He’s you,’ I tell her.

That’s how this stuff works , I realize. You decide what you would do if you were the enemy and then you do it different, or you do it better. Can’t imagine why I didn’t grasp that before.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘You’re on.’

Legs power me as I head for the trench below. A slug raises dust behind me, another hits the slope ahead. I’m throwing myself from side to side, which slows me down but makes me harder to hit. A hundred paces, seventy paces . . .

Fuck , I think, how much longer is she going to leave it?

And then it occurs to me Rachel can solve all her problems by doing nothing. Only she’s Aux, and she wouldn’t do that, would she? My answer comes in a single shot from behind.

After that, it is just cleaning up.

‘You know why this is necessary?’

Rachel nods, and I am glad. She doesn’t have to think it justice; she doesn’t have to think it right. She just has to understand why. If she doesn’t, the punishment is worthless. ‘Sir,’ she says. ‘May I say goodbye to Haze first?’

That is when I realize she thinks I’m following Colonel Vijay’s orders. He wants her shot. Too bad . I wanted a Silver Fist prisoner.

Neither of us is going to get what we wanted.

‘Rachel,’ I say, ‘it’s a whipping.’

Relief floods her eyes.

And that tells me she’s never been whipped, at least not properly. I have, and shooting is preferable. Five lashes shreds muscle from your back, and ten reveals glistening ribs. Fifteen can kill and, if it doesn’t, twenty will. As deaths go, the whipping post is a damn sight less clean than a bullet.

But we are not talking about a bull-hide whip here.

‘You have a knife?’

She nods, tears in her eyes.

It’s the relief, I realize. She’s up here expecting to be shot. That means the rest of them, waiting in a sullen little knot below, probably expect the same.

‘Show me your belt . . .’

Pulling it through the loops on her uniform trousers, she hands it to me. The leather is new and stiff in places, but I’ve seen worse. So I show her how to cut a cat’s tail and tell her I expect there to be at least ten more when I next see the belt.

She has an hour to cut the others and return.

I will be waiting up here on this slope. Three valleys up from the one where we fought the Silver Fist.

‘You going through with this?’ demands the SIG.

I nod, which it picks up.

‘They’re going to hate you.’

‘No, they’re not.’

‘And you don’t care if they do?’

‘Not really.’

When the SIG realizes I’m refusing to rise to the bait, it lets me field-strip it with bad grace. There are thirty-seven separate pieces, but only one way to break the gun down and put it back together. My quickest is one minute ten, and I’m aiming for under a minute before Rachel returns.

We’re down to fifty-five seconds when I hear a scuffle of boots on the gravel. She’s taken fifteen minutes to do a job hardened troopers will take the best part of a day over, if allowed.

Mind you, they know the results of getting it wrong.

‘Show me.’

She hands me the cat.

Too heavy and the lashes will cut to the bone, too light and they will lift whole patches of skin. ‘Anyone help you?’

Rachel shakes her head.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s get this over with.’

She doesn’t beg and she doesn’t hesitate. Just takes back her whip and follows me down the slope. Neen has the Aux lined up at the bottom. Their combat jackets are brushed down, their pockets fastened.

Colonel Vijay stands to one side, scowling.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘Give the whip to Haze.’

‘Bastard,’ says my gun, but says it quietly.

We are dealing with half a dozen issues here and I don’t have time for each in turn. I’m going to get them all over at once. Leading her to a rock, Haze waits for Rachel to remove her jacket, then leans her face-down on the rock’s hot surface and lifts the back of her shirt to her shoulders.

‘Five,’ I tell him.

It’s less than he expects.

‘Lay them on properly. Or I will.’

He is looking inwards, wondering if he caused this. We both know the answer to that. Haze didn’t cause it but he didn’t help either.

‘Are you ready?’

Lifting her head, Rachel nods.

‘Hold her by the wrists,’ I tell Neen and Franc. Looking at Shil, I say, ‘And you count the lashes.’

Everyone has a part in this. That’s the point.

Slashing the belt into Rachel’s back, Haze winces. It is hard for a first stroke, but he’s afraid I will take over if he doesn’t do it properly.

‘One,’ says Shil.

The second draws blood, for all that it is softer.

A third breaks her silence, but I decide she will make five without screaming. I’m right: she gasps at the third, gasps louder at the fourth and sobs with the fifth, but we are done.

‘Bring her here.’