Death's Head: Maximum Offence Read online

  Didn’t realize I had spoken aloud.

  ‘You can see it?’

  ‘Them,’ says the SIG.

  I turn it off.

  My boots take me down a twisting path and through an orange grove towards a small valley where the lights are heading. And the lights are powered, because they shift position twice, adjusting direction and rate of fall. But this isn’t a powered descent; it’s a jump followed by a controlled fall.

  FLEAS — fast leaping enemy access system. Some geek’s idea of a joke. Slapping the gun awake, I say, ‘Explosive.’

  ‘Don’t you want to confirm identity?’

  I hate it when the SIG’s right. ‘Be ready,’ I tell it.

  Yeah, I know, it’s always fucking ready.

  Hitting the bottom of a slope, I make it halfway up the other side in a single rush and roll to a stop. I’m grinning. Not sure I knew how much all that going to parties and being polite to Colonel Vijay was getting to me.

  ‘Incoming,’ says the gun.

  I duck, but it means the landers.

  Metal hits rock and long legs splay, pistons hissing. Dust rises, clearly visible through my night visor. The metal legs stay splayed, because each flea spikes to bedrock to stop its rebound. Flame adds to the dust, as explosive charges blow off doors and restraining straps peel back.

  One of the two pilots yanks the ring on a ceramic tube.

  Chaff, I think. Only it’s blinder.

  A million sparks flare as magnesium ignites. Luckily, my brain’s ahead of me and I’m flat in the dirt, eyes shut and then rolling out of harm’s way before a slug clips splinters from a rock beside me.

  Night vision’s fucked, though.

  These aren’t Silver Fist, and they’re sure as hell not Death’s Head. They are carrying weapons from half a dozen different armies.

  Dropping into a ditch, I sight over the edge. Empty a clip to keep them locked down. ‘Got one,’ says the gun.

  I’m not sure. So I stay low until I hear a rustle behind me.

  Flipping round, I find Colonel Vijay wearing a red dot from the SIG right in the middle of his forehead. Remember that one-second rule? Never been so tempted in my life. Only then, of course, we wouldn’t have the jump coordinates to get us off this habitat.

  ‘Get down,’ I tell him.

  He opens his mouth to object.

  ‘Alternatively, sir . . . feel free to get yourself killed.’

  Something tells me this really is his first time in the field. Behind him, five troopers crouch in the dirt.

  Neen crawls forward.

  ‘How many, sir?’

  ‘Two.’ Half of me wants to bollock him for not being quicker. The other half for not taking longer. I was just beginning to enjoy myself.

  ‘Silver Fist?’

  ‘Guess again,’ I tell him.

  The army’s mostly militia where he comes from and their job is to die. Militia don’t qualify for jumping fleas or use night haze. Kit like that comes expensive and militia are cheap. Since our new arrivals are not Death’s Head and they’re not Silver Fist, that only leaves . . .

  ‘Mercenaries?’

  Maybe Neen will make good after all.

  Nodding, I tell him to take two troopers and work his way round to the other side. He chooses Rachel, plus Haze, which surprises me.

  ‘You,’ I tell Franc. ‘Go that way.’

  My corporal slips away to my left, a blade between her teeth. I used to think soldiers only did that for effect. Not Franc, she lives those knives. Probably sleeps with one clutched to her breast. Now there’s a thought.

  ‘And you, follow her.’

  Shil vanishes.

  ‘Who are they?’ Colonel Vijay asks.

  ‘Mercenaries, sir.’

  These are the first civil words we’ve spoken to each other since he ordered the Aux to slaughter the Silver Fist troopers two days ago. They obeyed, despite knowing I wanted a prisoner. What else could they do?

  ‘Why are they here?’

  ‘Same reason as you, sir. I imagine.’

  My answer makes him go very quiet indeed.

  Chapter 18

  ON THE COAST, YOU CAN TELL THAT HEKATI IS ARTIFICIAL. IT’S hard to ignore a shoreline that rises away from you. Up here, where outcrops and peaks shorten the horizon, we can go whole days thinking we’re somewhere real.

  High on a mountain dawn is turning the rocks pink. And a warm wind is chasing away the night’s cold. It is a beautiful morning. Obviously enough, I am doing my best to ruin it for our new arrivals.

  Want to see metal melt like wax? Use a SIG-37 with cinder capacity. It makes most plasma rifles look as efficient as trying to melt sheet steel with a candle. Burning the fleas back to silvery puddles creates a rivulet of molten metal that ignites thorn bushes and dry bracken as it dribbles downhill towards a ditch.

  ‘Pretty,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘But you’re—’

  ‘Wait, sir.’

  Scrambling from the ditch, a mercenary takes a direct hit from my left. The slug ricochets off the armour on his shoulder, but that’s not the point. He’s rattled. Hitting dirt, he rolls behind a rock. If he has any sense, he’ll stay there.

  ‘Sir.’ Neen’s gaze flicks from me to the colonel.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Haze, sir . . . He’s worried.’

  My sergeant is in a difficult position. Haze isn’t paid to worry. In fact, I’m not sure he is paid at all. He was probably conscripted on the basis of food, shelter and all the ammunition one man can fire.

  ‘Not surprised,’ I say, nodding towards what remains of the pods. ‘Listening to that lot melt must hurt his head.’

  Now it is Colonel Vijay’s turn to look worried. ‘Those were AI?’

  ‘Semi AI at the most, sir.’

  One mercenary faces me. The other faces Rachel, who has them both locked down. ‘Your choice,’ I tell the gun.

  An over blast lights the dawn sky like a gigantic firework.

  The SIG-37 places its shot perfectly. Anyone else, and we’d’ve been down there scooping up chopped meat, if we could be bothered. As it is . . . When the explosion clears, a merc sticks his rifle round a rock and shoots back.

  ‘Ceramic carapace,’ says the SIG, making it sound obscene.

  Jumping fleas, full-body armour, a blind refusal to know where they are outnumbered . . . Now why does that sound familiar?

  Neen still wants my attention.

  ‘All right,’ I say. ‘What’s Haze worried about?’

  My sergeant hesitates. That tells me I’m not going to like it. ‘Sir,’ he says, ‘Haze tapped into Hekati’s AI. Didn’t mean to. It just happened. And while he was tapped in . . .’

  I’ll give Haze just happened.

  Firing off a shot, I duck as a mercenary fires back. They’re harder to kill than fagan lizards. Of course, you need to know what a fagan lizard is for that to make sense. ‘And while Haze was locked in . . . ?’

  ‘He piggybacked the sky cams. There are Silver Fist coming this way.’

  I grin.

  ‘That’s not good, sir.’

  ‘Why not? ‘

  ‘Sir,’ he says. ‘With respect, sir. We left our supplies back at camp. On Colonel Vijay’s orders. So we could travel light.’

  ‘What did you leave, exactly?’

  ‘Tents, sir. Food, sir. Most of the ammunition.’

  ‘Neen,’ I say. ‘Fuck off, now . . .’

  Punching a superior officer is a capital offence. Almost everything in this army is. It’s worse if he’s a staff officer. Then they shoot you, patch you up and shoot you all over again. Otherwise, everyone would do it.

  But I’m still not going to take it out on Neen.

  Seeing my anger, Colonel Vijay stays out of range. If he had any sense he would know just how close he is to being fragged by his own side. But he has all the sense of a blind kitten. Women probably find him sweet.

  Me, I just want to pull the pin on a grenade.

  ‘Stay h
ere, sir.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To tell the others to stop wasting ammo.’

  A couple of seconds later, our rifles fall silent. A second or so after that, the mercenaries do the same. With luck, we destroyed their supplies when we hit those pods.

  ‘Haze,’ I say, ‘you jacked into Hekati’s system?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he says. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Why?’ I demand.

  ‘Can’t help it, sir . . .’ He must know how stupid that sounds.

  ‘What did you discover?’

  ‘Accessed the schematics, sir. She keeps track of all transport moving inside her torus. She always has done, there used to be seven and a half million—’

  He sees my face and skips the lecture.

  ‘Transport?’

  ‘A Hex-Seven, sir.’

  An X7i landing craft? On Hekati’s sea?

  ‘And a copter, sir. It’s shielded.’

  The Hex-Seven is irrelevant. We are miles from the coast. Anything that happens here will be over before its crew arrive. But the copter . . .

  ‘You know where it is?’ I ask Haze.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘Find out.’

  ‘Sir,’ he says, ‘that means . . .’

  This boy isn’t a natural soldier. He isn’t a natural anything. Haze is a braid on the wrong side. Given half a chance, the Silver Fist will slice my throat, rip out my implant if only I had one, and poke their way through what is left of my brain. What they will do to Haze is far worse.

  And yet he’s still sticking in there. That is courage of a kind.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Haze says. He’s talking to himself. ‘They’re watching us . . .’ Scrabbling for his pad, he flips it open and flicks his fingers across its surface without glancing down.

  ‘Permission to request help, sir?’

  Help? I’d ask Haze where he thinks we’re going to get help, but he’s gone back to his pad and is scrabbling frantically at its keys. So I nod, realize he can’t see, and say, ‘Permission granted.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you. Thank you . . .’ Takes me a moment to realize he’s not talking to me.

  In the distance, a tiny explosion lights the side of our mountain.

  A few seconds later, there is another.

  Then another.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asks Colonel Vijay.

  We ignore him.

  ‘See them?’ I ask Neen, who hands me his field-glasses. I don’t need binoculars to know what is happening. Low-level lenz, the tiny comm-sat cameras that act as eyes for an advancing army, are dropping like hail into the valley below.

  It is time we left.

  Keeping our heads down, we make it to a stone hut before a copter skims overhead, heading for where the mercenaries still are.

  An Uplift trooper hangs from the hatch, a machine gun resting on his knee. A heat sensor hangs under the copter’s body. Watching them go, I’m grateful the sun’s already made the slate roof hotter than we are.

  A minute or so later a battle starts behind us.

  Silver Fist, meet the Mercenaries. Mercenaries, meet the Silver Fist.

  A belt-fed opens up and then falls silent. Grenades echo so loudly that pebbles trickle down the valley sides. I know how to read gunfire. Whoever the mercenaries are, they’re going down hard and taking a dozen Silver Fist with them.

  It’s brutal, but the conclusion is foregone. As mortars drown out small-arms fire, a belt-fed opens up one final time. When it stops, it’s from choice.

  A single shot brings silence.

  Neen says the soldier’s prayer. All any of us can hope for.

  ———

  Shouldering our weapons, we crest a ridge, switch tracks and begin the climb to a higher valley. Thorns drag at our legs and sweat dries before it has time to bead on our skin. The sun beats down and the wind is hot.

  ‘Our supplies,’ says Colonel Vijay.

  ‘Lost, sir.’

  He opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it again.

  ‘We should stop soon,’ he says finally.

  He is afraid to make it a direct order in case I disobey. He’s not sure what he will do if that happens. I am, he’ll do nothing. And his instinct is right. If he tells me to go back for the supplies or to stop this march, I’ll frag him where he stands.

  ‘Soon, sir,’ I say.

  ‘Good,’ he says, as if we’ve reached some agreement. A few hours later, he suggests stopping again. This time I don’t even bother to answer.

  Chapter 19

  ‘SO,’ SAYS THE SIG. ‘WHO ARE WE GOING TO KILL TODAY?’

  ‘We’ve only just got here.’

  ‘And your point is?’ it says. A click of a switch closes it down.

  The roof to our new base is missing, the front door has been stolen for firewood and the inside is strewn with goat droppings harder than buckshot. It’s ideal. There is even a spring outside, where black rock forces rainwater to the surface.

  ‘Obsidian,’ says Haze. Rachel thinks it’s coal.

  I don’t care what it is so long as it keeps providing water.

  ‘Slowly,’ I tell them. ‘Sip it slowly.’

  One entire circle of Hekati is behind us. It has taken five days in total, including today’s forced march, and I only know we’ve done it because this valley is where we came in. What we haven’t done is find our missing U/Free observer.

  We’ve seen ejército at a distance; they leave us alone. We see prospectors, and they don’t even know we are here. Is this what the ferox felt like? I wonder.

  Invisible, out on the edge.

  Boats skid across the distant sea like insects. Carts trundle from one city to another, pulled by donkeys or teams of men. Colonel Vijay is amazed. He never knew people lived like this. No one bothers to point out many live far worse.

  ‘Neen,’ I yell.

  He comes running.

  ‘Hunt something,’ I say. ‘Kill it. Get Franc to cook it.’

  My sergeant glances towards a figure sitting under a tree. He wants to say something about the colonel, but isn’t sure he should.

  I’m damn certain he shouldn’t. ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  We find a track half a mile above our new camp. It runs straight uphill and a wisp of fur suggests wildcat. A large one, given the thorn’s at hip height.

  My bet is the cat sleeps up here and hunts lower down, in which case we are heading in the wrong direction for food. Only I need a fresh look at the valley and the higher we go the better my chances of seeing the islands off Hekati’s coast. Because those are what we’ll need to search next.

  ‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘Can I talk freely?’

  ‘As long as it’s not about the colonel.’

  Our next stop is a rock overhanging the valley, with our camp far below and a glimpse of the sea beyond. All of Hekati’s rivers lead to that sea. Back in the day, there were obviously dozens of the things. Most of the river beds we meet now are little more than damp gravel or cracking mud.

  Seven million people once lived here. Now Hekati’s a back-water so far out of touch that other backwaters regard it with contempt.

  Ideal place to hide something, I think.

  There is more to this mission than a missing U/Free and some sickly prospectors, a bunch of Silver Fist and two dead mercenaries. I just know it. All I need to do is work out exactly . . .

  ‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘Are you all right?’

  A sixth sense prickles the back of my neck, and my body floods with adrenalin as the kyp flexes in my throat. My body does other stuff that makes little sense, like slowing my heartbeat and heightening my hearing. It’s an animal thing.

  ‘Prey?’ whispers Neen.

  ‘Hunters.’

  When I draw my gun, the load-and-lock diode is lit, the sights have ranged themselves to a hundred paces and the SIG has set itself for hollow-point.

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘Oh,’ says the SI
G. ‘Now he decides to talk to me.’

  As ordered, Neen goes first. He finds a ditch and crawls along it until he crosses the wildcat’s track we found earlier and follows that for fifty paces. I’m right behind him, and slam my hand over his mouth the moment he stops.

  ‘Quiet.’

  He is not nearly scared enough for what’s making its way towards us. Unholstering the SIG, I drop out its clip, count ceramics and fold my fingers round the handle to deaden the noise as the clip slots back into place.

  Seeing me do this, Neen checks his own rifle.

  He has eighty to a clip, another hundred hanging from his belt. I would swap both the SIG and his rifle for a single moly-coated bullet and thirty seconds with Rachel’s sniper rifle. Obviously, I don’t say this. The SIG can sulk for days.

  ‘Ready?’

  My gun sighs. ‘Always.’

  ‘Single shot . . .’

  Diodes whirr, although it has the sense to damp them. Somewhere the SIG has settings for mute. It must, all intelligent guns do. I’ve yet to find them.

  The rocks ahead have that flat quality hot landscape gets when the sun is directly above and unfiltered by cloud. And I know Hekati’s sun is reflected, that dawn and dusk are tricks created with mist and mirrors. But the people who design these places are good, and thinking too much about that stuff fucks you up. So I don’t.

  ‘Field-glasses.’

  Neen hands them over.

  Takes me three seconds to find what I know is out there. ‘Take a look,’ I say, passing the glasses back. ‘And don’t let light reflect on the lens.’

  ‘Oh fuck,’ he says. ‘That means . . .’

  It means two mercenaries took down a platoon of Silver Fist, destroyed a copter and took out two braids. There is no doubt about that last bit. Because each has a severed head hanging from his belt.

  One braid has three metal snakes, the other five. That’s a major and a full colonel in our world. Also, the mercenaries seem to have helped themselves to a collection of Silver Fist weapons.

  When Neen raises his rifle, I say, ‘Let them pass.’

  He shuts his mouth and does what he’s told.

  I have my reasons. Either those two are the world’s best trackers or they have a fix on something. And my guess is it’s Haze.