David Gunn - Maximum Offence

Diodes die before I can finish the sentence.

A dozen Death’s Head officers nod, and a handful of them smirk. I’m glad; it lets me know who to kill first. After the Silver Fist, obviously. There are six of these, three on either side of the door. All are armed. And all have guns pointing at my head.

‘Sven,’ says the general. ‘I’ve been expecting you.’ Waving vaguely towards the middle of his cabin, he adds, ‘Come in. And bring your friends.’

So in we troop.

Although that is not entirely true, because when I glance back Haze is missing and Rachel is shutting the door carefully behind her.

‘Sir,’ says the little ADC. ‘Perhaps we should disarm them?’

The general considers this.

‘Why,’ he asks. ‘Would it make you feel safer?’

The boy blushes.

Returning my SIG to its holster, I fumble the catch and then unbuckle my belt, dropping it to the deck. At least fumbling is how it’s meant to look. One throwing spike now rests in the palm of my hand. At my nod, the Aux put down their guns.

‘Search them.’

The boy finds a knife in my boot.

‘Anyone else hiding anything?’ asks General Tournier. ‘If so, you might want to give your weapons up.’ There is a drawl to his voice, and a smile on his face that would disgrace a cat. He’s obviously hoping we’ll ignore his suggestion.

‘Lose the lot,’ I say.

The Aux do as they’re told.

Rachel has a knife inside her shirt, Neen a blade in his boot that the general’s ADC missed first time round. Shil just shakes her head. Trooper Emil, our ex-Ninth captain, has a tiny pistol tucked into the back of his belt. Not sure how he expected to get away with that.

‘That’s it?’

Everyone nods.

‘And again,’ the general says.

Only this time he is talking to a Silver Fist.

The man starts with me and finds nothing, because the throwing spike is now buried deep under the flesh of my good wrist. Hurts, but then it would. Neen goes next and he’s clean. As expected, the man spends more time than necessary on the women.

Stony-faced, Franc waits while he runs his hands over her hips and up the inside of her legs. He misses the blade between her shoulders, but to find that he needs to focus less on her breasts. Rachel just stands there. Shil is less forgiving.

In fact, her slap rocks the Silver Fist on his heels. She is savagely punched for her trouble. As she crawls to her feet, she glances at Neen, who nods. One of the knives on the deck a second before is now missing.

Emil turns out to have a cosh in his boot. When he picks himself up, he sneers at the Silver Fist who hit him and has to pick himself up all over again.

‘Just leaves your arm,’ General Tournier tells me.

I’ve been wondering when he would get round to that. When the arm arrived, the screw designed to hold it in place was crusty with rust. Now it’s crusted with a mix of new rust and dried blood from the Vals. That makes it damn near impossible to shift without the right tools. When I point this out to the general, he suggests I try using a discarded blade. So polite these Death’s Head senior officers.

We might as well be discussing the weather.

‘Of course,’ he says, ‘we’ll kill your troops if you try anything stupid. And after that we’ll kill you, obviously.’ Two Silver Fist point their rifles at me as I bend to pick up a knife.

Don’t show any surprise, sir . . .

Haze is inside my head. And yes, I told him to stay out of there, but I’m still glad to hear him. Listen , I say. My fucking gun’s dead again .

Faking, sir .

It can do that?

‘Sven,’ the general’s voice is abrupt.

Looking up, I find the whole room staring at me.

‘Anything wrong?’

History is made of questions asked and roads taken . . . So Haze tells me, but he talks shit about stuff like that. What will happen happens, and anything that doesn’t happen wasn’t meant to happen in the first place. This is our glorious leader’s definition of historical determinism .

So it is unquestionably right.

All the same, there seems more than one answer to the general’s question. And I’m not sure which is right. Presumably, if I say it, then that is what I’m meant to say, and I was never going to say anything else anyway.

‘Fuck,’ I say.

‘What?’ General Tournier demands.

‘Thinking,’ I say. ‘Makes my head hurt. Always has done.’

Looking round his room with its carpet and bowls of fruit, and staff officers chatting to each other because this has lasted so long it’s become boring, I realize the obvious. ‘Should have killed you,’ I say. ‘Should have just killed the fucking lot of you the first time we met . . .’

He stares at me. ‘You’re not really a colonel, are you?’

‘ What the fuck do you think? ‘

Now I have his officers’ attention back. And I am actually beginning to enjoy myself, because facing death does that for me. Then there’s our glorious leader’s law . . . You know, the one that demands ex-NCOs announce their status, so trouble-makers can be identified early.

‘I’m an ex-sergeant,’ I say. ‘From the Legion.’

‘Jaxx sent a sergeant after me?’

‘An ex-sergeant,’ I remind him. ‘A Legion ex-sergeant.’

It is worth saying for the look on General Tournier’s face. This man is seriously insulted. As for his staff officers, they’re slicking sideways glances at him. This is fine, because it means they’re not looking at me.

‘Neen,’ I say.

Stabbing a guard, Neen flicks the blade to his sister. She kills the one next to her, then goes after a man behind. I’m busy extracting my elbow from the skull of the nearest Silver Fist. And the man who patted down Franc has a new mouth. As I watch, she reaches into the gash and yanks his tongue through the slit.

Serious anger issues, that woman.

We’re good, and we’re quick. Six dead in less than a second. But guns are being levelled across the room.

‘Neen,’ I say. ‘The SIG.’

Neen wants to say it’s dead. Instead, he hooks his foot under the holster and boots it up to me.

Catching the SIG, I rip it free.

‘ Haze ,’ I say.

The lights go out. Actually, everything goes out. Lights, temperature control, oxygen recycling units, cheesy classical music, the lot.

‘Hollow-point . . .’

The SIG-37’s loaded up already.

I fire at their muzzle flashes and they fire at mine. Only I’m not where I was because I’m already somewhere else. All of my troopers have hit the deck and rolled towards the nearest bulkhead, which helps. Although I almost trip over Rachel.

She yelps, and then yelps again when I boot her out of the way.

It’s dark, and then it’s not, because my eyes adjust and I watch the general aim his gun. Seems I’m not the only one with night vision. This isn’t looking good. ‘ Move ,’ suggests my gun.

‘Too late,’ says the general.

‘Not really,’ says the man standing directly behind him.

Smashing his brandy glass, Colonel Vijay rams it into the general’s neck, and twists savagely on the stem to widen the wound. Blood spurts halfway across the room, and then weakens until a final dribble wets the general’s boots like piss.

Vijay does this blind. In total darkness. Having memorized his position.

I’m impressed. ‘Sir,’ I say, ‘the command is yours.’

‘Carry on, Sven.’

The next job is less pretty.

The general’s little ADC has his dagger out and is jabbing it frantically at the darkness around him. He’s as likely to stab his own side as ours; but he is frightened beyond caring.

Was I like that? I wonder. When Lieutenant Bonafonte put his gun to my head in the dump. The day the Legion burnt down my village and slaughtered the Junkyard Rats on the road below the edge of Primary One.