Death's Head (30 page)

The man does as he’s told.

Ion’s looking at me. He’s grinning. “You’re the maniac who gutted a lagarto, then cooked it and started handing bits of alligator around?” He looks really pleased to see me. “Always wanted to hunt one. What was it like?”

“Big,” I say. “Ugly.”

“What did you use to kill it?”

I tap my pocket. “Laser blade, seriously useful. Used it on Paradise to cut tunnels in the ice. That blade can do pretty much anything.”

“Paradise?”

“Yeah. I got sent there by accident.”

A man I don’t recognize suddenly grabs a spare stool from another table and places it very close to mine. He looks like he’s working out whether he can take me. We both reach the same conclusion: He can’t.

It’s one of those you-and-whose-army moments. Given my army is sitting at my back and most of the drunks in this place don’t look as if they’re about to volunteer to be any part of his, the man’s not very happy.

He is, however, seriously angry. “You were a guard on Paradise?”

“Not a guard,” I say. “A prisoner.”

The man blinks.
That’s impossible,
he wants to say.
No one gets out.

Ion is laughing. “Don’t tell me,” he says. “They made you an offer you couldn’t refuse?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Swap all that for all this.” I gesture around Hot Bar Wild, with its vomit-stained floor, sulking strippers, and metal-grilled windows. As I said, we could be in any strip club, in a thousand different cities, on a hundred different planets, we just happen to be here.

“And now,” I tell Ion, “I’m going to make you a similar offer. You and a hundred close friends can swap all this for anywhere within ten star systems of here. Onetime-only offer. You get to leave three days from now, in the only ship with a key code for getting through the ball busters.”

I’ve got his total attention. “What’s the catch?”

“You have to live that long.”

Someone swears, and Ion holds up one hand, silencing them. “Lay it out for us,” he says.

CHAPTER 36

I
N THE
early hours of the morning, with most of the city still ignorant of the horrors about to happen, I hear clattering downstairs and find Haze crouched over a bucket in the kitchen, vomiting.

“Alcohol,” he says.

He doesn’t want me to think it’s fear.

A towel is wrapped around his head, and when Haze comes down to breakfast he’s wearing his Death’s Head cap. He eats almost nothing, yet still looks bulkier than he did a week before. Also, he’s sweating.

“Hangover,” says Franc when she sees me watching.

Bread, cheese, and a cold chunk of goat are set out on the table. A coffeepot is bubbling over a fire built on what was meant to be an ornamental hearth. The engineers never did get the city’s power back.

“Eat,” says Maria. “And take food with you.” Her eyes are red; her fingers when she leaves the table brush Neen’s shoulder. When she returns with another jug of coffee, his hand covers hers as she pours him a second cup.

She follows us to the door to say good-bye.

“Lock it once we’re gone,” says Shil. She hugs the other girl, which comes as a surprise to all of us.

Dawn is a slash of pink on the far horizon when we meet Ion at the river gates. The militia are already gathered and shock is their dominant expression, because they’ve been ordered to hold the gates until sunset. Against the enemy, obviously, but also against us, should we try to retreat to the safety of the city.

Even Ion is rattled.

“Volunteers only,” I tell him. “Anyone who wants to stay on this side of the gates can. The rest of us hold until sunset or we die.”

“And anyone left alive gets to go off planet.”

“The first hundred,” I say.

He snorts; we both know the final figure is unlikely to be that high. Ion’s bought five hundred men, the ugliest, nastiest collection of moneygrubbing mercenaries you’ve ever seen, and I’m glad to see every one of them. All are armed to the teeth, mostly with pulse rifles. A couple of groups lug belt-feds between them, while a man built like a tank is dragging an eight-barreled rocket launcher by hand.

A slightly more sophisticated rocket launcher—well, one sophisticated enough to roll along under its own power—is being maneuvered through the gates by two women who seem identical from their cropped hair to their uniforms. When they meet our stare, it’s obvious their faces are identical as well.

“Twins?” Haze asks Ion.

“Vals 9 and 11,” he says. “Copies.”

“Of what?”

“Each other.” He says it as if it should be obvious.

“Does the original still exist?” I ask.

Ion shakes his head.

“So they’re copies of copies?” says Shil.

“Aren’t we all,” Ion says, turning his back on us. When I next see him, we’re through the gates and he’s telling Vals 9 and 11 where to place their rocket launcher. The glare all three shoot at Shil is undisguised contempt.

“Rules differ,” I tell her.

“Yes,” says Haze. “The U/Free use soldier bots to do this shit.” He nods at a group of militia who are delivering ammunition to the trenches they dug earlier. Mercenaries fight, but they don’t dig ditches.

“The Free have no army,” I tell him.

Haze looks like he wants to disagree.

“Believe me,” I say. “They don’t need one.”

“Why doesn’t OctoV have machines?” demands Shil.

“Because he doesn’t have Free technology and people are cheaper.”

CHAPTER 37

O
N THE
one day of the year we could do with fog, sleet, or something to make the landing parties even more miserable, the planet decides to give us blue skies and high-feathered clouds.

We’re dug into a foxhole. Imagine a broad arrow pointing downward; we’re its point. Ion is ahead of us, to one side; Vals 9 and 11 in a matching foxhole on the other side. We have people dug in right up both sides of the arrowhead, almost to the riverbank.

Most of us are still alive. A handful are already dead.

“Incoming,” says my gun.

The batwings are back, screaming over the marshes, their banshee howls enough to unnerve almost everyone. Me, I’m just irritated.

“Come on,” says my gun. “Just one.”

I shake my head. We’re saving ammunition until the Hex-Sevens get closer. The SIG diabolo already knows that.

“In a minute,” I promise.

There’s a fallback position behind us. A single trench slashed into the dirt and covered with brush and thermal net to hide it from heat-reading satellites overhead, although I’ve always doubted if such netting actually works.

“Ready?”

Everyone gives the affirmative except Haze, who sits hunched over his slab, his rifle untouched beside him.

“Haze.”

When he answers, his voice is little more than a fevered whisper. “They’re coming around again.” Sweat is running down his face and every now and then he scratches furiously at his skull.

“We need to talk,” I say.

He shakes his head, flinching as I reach for his cap. “Please, sir,” he says, and then, “I’m on your side.”

“Okay. We’ll talk later.”

I’m finally beginning to realize the obvious…Haze is a NewlyMade. The virus isn’t catching, but that wouldn’t stop a dozen of the nearest mercenaries from ripping him apart on the spot, just in case. I’m not sure if he’s an odd or an even, a soldier or a thinker. We’ll know that when his scalp sheds its hair and he grows buds for either one or two braids.

“Pretty please,” says my gun.

I have Haze check his slab and decide the Hex-Sevens are close enough for me to put the SIG out of its misery.

“If you must,” I say.

Less than a second later the SIG’s locked on to a batwing and is torturing it through a fast twist of spirals and crash dives as the tiny plane fights to break free. When the batwing does, the SIG regrips, releases the batwing, and catches it again.

“This is fun.”

“Just kill the bloody thing,” I tell the gun, and the batwing blows apart in a fireball that drops sizzling metal into the marsh.

“That was vicious.”

“Brutal,” agrees Franc, grinning wildly.

“And for my next trick,” the gun announces, as a second batwing begins to stagger its way across the sky.

Vals 9 and 11 are also busy. A flash, a single rocket, and a third batwing hits the dirt with a satisfying
crump.
Someone jeers. Between us and our five other launchers, we account for eighteen batwings in the next seven minutes, at a cost of thirty-one rockets. We know this because Haze is keeping count, or at least his slab is. We have 172 rockets left.

“Shil,” I say, “how long have you known about Haze?”

She goes very still. “You share a room with Franc,” I say. “How can you not know?”

“Franc told me a while back, sir.”

“And is Haze really her cousin?”

Shil wants to lie, but honesty makes her hesitate. It’s Ion who saves her from having to choose. “Incoming,” he warns us.

A high fighter is rolling itself out of position and looping in a slow circle over the marshes. As we watch, it drops low and fire begins to fall from the rear edge of its wings.

Vals 9 and 11 are winding a handle on the side of their machine. I understand that mechanical gearing protects rocket launchers from logic bombs, but it also makes aiming dangerously slow. And the plane is using a force field, because every rocket they fire explodes before it gets close.

“Take it,” I tell the SIG.

Diodes blaze, flicking through a rapid sequence that slows and then falters. A second attempt fails in the same way.

“Double fuck,” says my gun, launching a third attempt.

But it’s too late for that.
“Get down.”

We hit the dirt, followed by most of the troops around us. You can’t face rainfire or try to fight it. You just live through it, if you’re lucky. A dozen people aren’t. The liquid ignites as it hits and eats their uniform to reveal blistering flesh; the flesh strips back to ribs, shoulder bones, and spines, with the bone incinerating itself only seconds later.

“Fléchette,” I order, and my gun switches clips.

I shoot the first five human candles I see, nodding as other soldiers begin to do the same. The lucky ones are killed by their companions; the unlucky die screaming as their friends watch in frozen horror. The Uplifted have us killing our own side, a good trick if you can pull it off.

“What?” I demand.

Shil looks away.

“Sir…” Haze wants to say something.

I nod to a patch of earth next to me.

“Please,” he says. “Not here.”

My shrug says it all.
Where then?
All hell is ready to break loose and this is the spot we have to hold for at least an hour, until we fall back to a trench we need to hold for eight times longer. Neither foxhole nor trench has the slightest real value; their worth in lives is completely arbitrary, utterly artificial.

Where exactly does he want me to go?

Maybe over there, sir?
says Haze.

And in my gullet the kyp spasms for the first time in weeks, and I’m on my knees vomiting before I’ve even realized his voice was in my head. Ion is staring across from his foxhole, as are the Vals.

“Implant malfunction.” My voice is little more than a croak.

The Vals look sympathetic. “Want us to cut it out?”

I touch my throat, indicating the kyp’s position. “Better not,” I say, trying for a grin.

Ion is looking at me strangely. “I scanned you yesterday,” he says. “In the bar. I only got the arm and some weirdshit at the base of your spine.”

Base of my spine?

“Soft implant,” I tell him.

Now I’ve got Franc and the others looking at me weirdly as well. Soft implants are illegal, punishable by death. Real death, the kind that wipes out all copies. Assuming you’re rich enough to make copies in the first place, which I’m not and probably never will be.

“It’s a long story.”

And it’s a story I’m not going to tell. The three days in Farlight while the kyp bedded in are still real enough to mess with my dreams.