David Gunn - Maximum Offence

‘Troopers,’ I tell her. ‘We call them troopers.’

She looks at me.

‘Paper,’ I say, ‘I don’t think about it.’

The U/Free ambassador nods sympathetically. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I can understand that.’

I could say, No . . . I simply don’t think about it .

But what’s the point? So I clear my plate and wipe it clean of melted snow with a chunk of bread. There’s something nagging me. So I decide to get it out of the way. ‘Why are we here?’ I ask.

Raising her wine glass, Paper says, ‘To celebrate your safe return.’

‘But the mission was a failure.’

‘ Sven ,’ she says.

‘For the U/Free.’

Paper Osamu looks puzzled. ‘For us?’

‘The treaty,’ I say. ‘The one that would have folded OctoV back into the mind of the Enlightened and Uplifted, ended the war and bound us by treaty to the United Free . . . You must be upset.’

She puts down her glass.

‘Unless, of course, you didn’t really want it signed at all . . .’

‘You know,’ she says, ‘I’m not sure what you heard when you were staying with us in Letogratz. But I think you might have misunderstood what was said.’

‘I might?’

Nodding, she touches my hand. ‘Diplomacy can be complicated,’ she says. ‘Particularly for . . .’

‘Savages?’

Her mouth sets in a tight line.

This isn’t the way our dinner is meant to go. We both know Paper has taken a suite at a hotel near the cathedral, while her embassy is redecorated. Imperia is less than a minute from the hotel. We have the whole night ahead of us and she’s wearing a dress cut so low I can see her nipples every time she leans forward.

So can the waiter who delivers our food.

Another three courses of fancy food and we can stumble our way to bed, via a fuck against an alley wall if that excites me. I’m ruining the atmosphere. But that is fine, because I’m going home when this is over. Although I’m not sure Paper realizes that yet.

‘Sven,’ she says. ‘Have I upset you?’

Behave , General Jaxx told me. So I do. Sitting back, I say Of course not .

After all, it could be someone else at the dump. Another U/Free with Paper’s face watching while a squad from the Legion slaughter the Junkyard Rats, kill my sister and burn my village. And what’s a dead auxiliary between friends? Even if Franc was better with a knife than anyone I know, except me.

The sky’s dark and Zabo Square deserted as I cut around the cathedral, make my way under an arch and through a public garden where a Death’s Head major once tried to put a flechette through my head.

He’s dead and I’m alive, for now.

It is late and Farlight’s boulevards are quiet. A man smokes a cigar in the upstairs window of an ornate mansion. I can smell the richness of burning tobacco. Although maybe that’s just my imagination.

In a doorway a girl freezes, watching me over a boy’s shoulder as I pass.

A security guard moves forward to challenge me a few minutes later, sees my uniform and turns his challenge into a salute. The Death’s Head colours do that to people. If he wonders what a lieutenant is doing heading for a barrio on the upper edges of Calinda Gap, he has the sense to keep that question to himself.

‘Night, sir,’ he says.

‘Which regiment?’

He served with the XI Legion Etrangere. His name’s Paulo, he wants to know how I knew about the Legion. I tell him it leaves its mark on people.

Taking the coin I offer, he sees it’s gold.

‘Knew someone in the Legion,’ I tell him. ‘A good man.’

‘What happened, sir?’

‘He died.’

The security guard nods, as if that’s the obvious answer. And it is. We both know that.

Returning his salute, I head uphill until I reach a street I recognize. A cable car runs through here day and night. Aptitude told me about it. But I prefer walking anyway.

At a cafe below the landing fields, I stop for a coffee and a brandy. The cafe is small, used by people unloading cargo or working the repair yards. A man looks up briefly, looks up again and mutters something. A woman opposite slides me a glance, and then quickly looks away.

‘Brandy,’ I say.

So nervous is the young woman behind the counter that the entire room hears her rattle the bottle against my glass. She slops my coffee delivering it. And spends a full minute apologizing.

Time was, I’d ask her name. Ask what time she got off. Maybe ask if she has a sister who would like to join us for a meal. Either I’d get my face slapped or we would all end up in bed. The uniform works against this.

Finishing the brandy, I leave my coffee undrunk.

Golden Memories is in darkness as I work my way round the side of the landing field at Bosworth. Must be late , I think. Then check the sky and realize it is almost morning.

The front door is locked and bolted from the inside.

A metal grille closes off the rear entrance and all the windows are shut. Nothing for it: slamming my elbow through a pane of glass, I reach inside and have my wrist grabbed. Neen discovers you can’t nail a burglar to a wall with a knife if his hand is metal. ‘Fuck,’ he says. ‘Boss?’

‘Yeah. Me.’

Opening the door, Neen waves me inside. ‘Thought you’d be-’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Well, I’m not.’

The Cathedral in the centre of Farlight is so virus-ridden it has sunk into the caldera floor on which OctoV’s capital is built. It sits, faded and half melted facing Zabo Square. Cafes line the square around it, and a statue of a young woman sits under a colonnade a hundred paces away from where I am standing. She is made of bronze, and naked, obviously. Statues in Farlight always are.

The statue bears a striking resemblance to the girl next to me. At least, the face does. I can’t swear to the rest of it.

‘My great-grandmother,’ says Aptitude.

I look at her.

‘She was sixteen.’

There are things about Farlight I don’t understand. How the rules work for the high clans is one of them. What kind of family puts statues of themselves naked in public for the entire world to see?

But knowing I don’t know is a start.

Ask me six months ago and I would have said the rich and powerful don’t work to any rules at all, because they don’t have to . . .

It’s not true. They have rules. Just weird ones.

Where I come from if someone injures you, then you kill them. Provided it’s serious enough. Round here, you invite them to a party and then patronize them to death. Aptitude has to tell me what patronize means.

I look at her to check if she’s joking; she’s not.

Aptitude is good with words. She’s good at cooking too. She has taken over the kitchens at Golden Memories; and now people actually come to eat, instead of regarding eating as an inconvenient fuel break between drinking and fucking.

Only we’re not in Golden Memories.

As I said, we’re standing outside a cafe on Zabo Square, in the shade of an umbrella, looking at a bronze girl with perfect breasts and a smile that is missing from the face of the young woman beside me. Aptitude is shaking. It’s not from the cold, because the sun is so hot that sweat drips down the inside of my jacket.

The last time either of us was here, she had just got married. And shooting her husband was my first job for the general. As far as we know Jaxx thinks she is dead. Her ex-husband certainly is. But in that case . . .

‘ I don’t know ,’ I tell Aptitude.

She looks at me, eyes made large by fear.

Neen is outside the cathedral waiting for me. He is in full uniform, as are the rest of my troopers, minus their rifles. It’s not just us; everyone invited to this afternoon’s service is minus their weapons.