Death's Head: Maximum Offence Read online

  ‘You all right, sir?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ It comes out louder than I intend. All this thinking is getting to me.

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘We’re going to go down there, kill one of them and drag it back to the cave, take a look at what it is.’

  As plans go, I have heard worse.

  So has she. Sketching me a salute, Franc draws a knife from her belt and waits for her orders.

  ‘That way.’

  Shale slithers as we head downhill. We keep to the shadows, following the bed of a dry river, but it is not enough. A howl from ahead is answered by a howl off to the left, and then by another to the right.

  They know we’re coming.

  Franc freezes the moment I raise my hand.

  ‘Stay here,’ I order. ‘Count to ten, then make enough noise for five.’

  She wants to be down there mixing it but she does as she is told. A few seconds after I leave, my corporal begins booting rocks down the slope, one after another. And she boots them hard.

  That girl is a miracle of pure pent-up aggression.

  As she kicks, Franc flicks a blade from hand to hand. It moves so fast it’s impossible to say which hand holds the knife at any point. Her shoulders are loose and she’s slouching.

  Unless you have Legion training, she looks off guard. If you have Legion training, she looks very dangerous indeed.

  Leaving Franc behind, I head towards a desert floor that ripples like an ocean, the silver grey of the shale catching the moonlight in patches of broken surf.

  Then I see them.

  At least I see one of them.

  From here, he looks human. Tall and broad, with a shock of hair that sweeps back from his skull and falls halfway down his spine. He is naked, like a ferox, but the blade in his hand is sharpened steel.

  He turns.

  Deep-set eyes scan the slope.

  When the stone in my hand lands fifty paces to his left he smiles. Thinking he’s got me. Only his gaze slides over where my stone hit and flicks back, as he tilts his head, trying to pinpoint the exact position.

  The moonlight is hurting his eyes.

  Must be like trying to stare into the sun for me, because he has one hand shading his face, while the other holds his blade low and slightly tilted.

  It’s a good stance.

  He can hear Franc on the slope above, there is no doubt about that. Every so often, his gaze flicks uphill, before returning to where he thinks I should be.

  Only by now, I’m somewhere else.

  There are five of them. A scout and four bunched together. As another two shadows crest a dune, I change my count to seven, adding an eighth, who appears from one side. Crouching, I watch the scout look from where he thinks I am to where Franc is making a noise, and then behind him to where the others cluster.

  He is too indecisive to be senior.

  That leaves the other seven.

  Of the four together, one is small enough to be adolescent, one old and on the edge of the group. Another waves his hands and grunts, returning to the same sounds repeatedly. No one in command needs to make that much fuss about anything.

  Knocking those three off my list, I edge close as one of those who crested the dune begins to shuffle down the near side. The others fall silent and face the naked newcomer.

  Their leader is female.

  A xenohuman, from when people changed to suit planets. This was before planets changed to suit people. She’s whipcord thin, muscles sliding over one another and sinews locking like rope as she swivels to glance uphill. A deep-throated growl sends the scout loping away into the darkness.

  Franc’s problem.

  With that decision, I move. Five steps take me to their group.

  As an older male slashes, I catch his blade on my wrist and sparks fly. It is enough to make him hesitate.

  Bad mistake.

  A twist of his head and his neck’s broken. My next move shatters the jaw of a creature behind. When he stays standing, I sidekick his knee and hear the wet suck of cartilage rupturing. He howls, but that stops as I stamp on his throat.

  It is brutal.

  Battles always are.

  At least the kind I fight.

  The next creature dies in silence, my hand crushing his larynx so viciously my fingers meet in the middle. He’s dead, but I rip his throat out anyway.

  Stepping back, I kick the balls of the adolescent opposite. She doesn’t have any. Female, I realize, as she screams. All the same, my boot doubles her over and I grip both sides of her head.

  I knew another girl like her, on a different planet. The ferox ate her.

  ‘Fuck it.’

  I don’t do guilt, and I don’t do regret for something occurring half a spiral arm away. Twisting hard, I break this one’s neck; and let her drop, trying not to stare at a dark triangle of hair and two perfect breasts.

  As a howl comes from their leader, I realize I’ve done it. The fight is now personal.

  Her daughter, her granddaughter?

  Doesn’t matter. This tribe runs with a female as the boss and her successor is lying dead at my feet.

  ‘Come on then,’ I say.

  The other two fall back as the female stalks forward.

  She is huge. A good head taller than me, and I’m the tallest person I know. A blade hangs from her right hand. It is filthy along most of its length, but its edge has been sharpened on stone.

  These creatures didn’t make that blade.

  Also, they don’t belong on this planet, because none of us belongs on this planet or any other still in existence. The planet we belong on ate itself. Only that is heresy, so I try not to say it, even to myself. Because our beloved emperor hates heresy. You would be surprised the number of things he hates.

  Well, perhaps you wouldn’t.

  It’s still true though.

  I have time to think this because the creature wants me to make the first move. Her remaining followers stand off to one side. Neither approaches me; she has them too well trained for that.

  She circles, I circle.

  Stepping sideways, we keep a safe distance between us. I am flicking my blade hand-to-hand, Franc-style. It irritates the leader, because she thinks I should have attacked by now.

  But I’m waiting and circling, until light from the largest of the three moons hits her eyes.

  That’s when I move.

  It is just for show, a lunge towards her gut.

  As she twists away, I make my second move, sliding my feet from under me to hit her ankle with the edge of my boot.

  I have Franc’s accident to thank for that idea.

  Rocking back, the creature then steps forward again, straight onto her freshly dislocated ankle. One shout of pain joins another as I cut her hamstrings, good leg first. She goes down hard as a falling tree. And I’m rolling myself up her, ending with a palm strike under her nose. The usual happens: bone enters her brain, her brain stops working . . .

  Not that it was that hot in the first place.

  By now, I am back on my feet.

  Neither of the others tries to stop me as I walk away. From behind comes growling, but I ignore it. They’re in shock. Attacking would focus their minds, and these are minds best left unfocused. Part of me wonders how I know that, and the rest doesn’t care. I have been in enough battles to trust my instinct.

  ———

  Climbing the slope takes longer than I like. The shale slides beneath my feet, and one of the moons vanishes behind a cliff. It’s the largest, and the loss of light makes the climb more difficult.

  Of course, I could just plough my way up. But I’m trying to be subtle.

  ‘Franc . . . ?’

  I keep my voice low. No one answers, so I slow slightly and head for where I remember her being.

  ‘You there?’

  The fire is straight ahead of me. A flickering glow, mostly hidden by the slope and the fact it is built in the mouth of a cave. She should be here. Franc is not the type to retreat.


  ‘Sir . . .’

  ‘Franc?’

  ‘Man down, sir.’

  I find her enemy first. His throat’s open to the bone, and a savage cut above his nose has ruined both his eyes. He stinks and shit glazes one leg. A dagger juts from his gut; it looks as if Franc lacked the strength to drag it upwards.

  My corporal’s state isn’t much better.

  ‘Stay still.’ When she looks at me, I see pain.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ she says. ‘Even Haze can’t fix this.’ Her hand flaps weakly towards her jacket.

  Moonlight shows blood on the leather of her coat, but not what the coat is covering. Franc tries to stop me as I begin to lift the edge.

  ‘Too late,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, slapping away her hand. ‘We’ve done that bit.’ She wants to know if it is as bad as she thinks.

  It’s worse.

  Franc has the ribs of a stray kitten, the tits of a kid and a jagged rip below one of them that shows me her heart beating. It pumps slowly, shuddering between beats. The scout didn’t just stab her, he opened her chest.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Told you.’

  ‘Franc . . .’

  ‘It’s in your eyes.’ She smiles, bitterly. ‘You’re not as hard to read as you think.’

  ‘I don’t . . .’

  She looks at me.

  ‘Want to talk about that?’ I say, changing the subject. My finger traces a puckered scar, one of a dozen that run from her hipbone to where her body hair would start, assuming she had any.

  Franc shakes her head.

  ‘It might help.’

  Her laugh brings blood with it. ‘How?’ she demands. ‘How the fuck could it help?’

  ‘Tell me who did it and I’ll kill them.’

  ‘Is that a promise?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Guaranteed.’

  ‘Then you’re a fool . . .’ At my look, her mouth twists. ‘Yeah, I know. You’re a fool, sir.’ Realizing I still don’t understand, she says: ‘I did them. Well, mostly. The others came free, but that’s family for you.’

  ‘And I can’t kill your family because . . . ?’

  ‘I’ve done it already.’ She glances at the knife in my hand, splattered with blood from the creatures below. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘now would be a good time to make good on that promise.’

  ‘Franc . . .‘

  ‘You did it for Corporal Haven.’

  She names a trooper I have forgotten, from a battle that barely registers.

  ‘You’re sure?’ That is a question I’m not meant to ask.

  Her scowl tells me so.

  Unsheathing one of Franc’s blades, I grip her shoulder with my hand and touch the tip of the knife to her heart. ‘Ready?’ I ask, because Franc deserves the final say on this.

  She nods.

  ‘Sleep well,’ I tell her. ‘And a better life next time.’

  A soldier’s prayer. My prayer. And so I jab the blade through beating muscle and shock her heart into stillness.

  Chapter 6

  FRANC WEIGHS NEXT TO NOTHING, AND SPILLING HER BLOOD barely increases the mess. As I stamp my way up the slope, the second of the three moons disappears behind a cliff and a dozen extra stars appear, as the night grows darker.

  I don’t know if our attackers carry home their dead. I don’t care. We do. We are the Aux. I don’t give a fuck if we’ve only been in existence for a few months. It is one of our oldest traditions.

  The fire burns brightly in the mouth of our cave.

  Neen takes one look at what I’m carrying and his relief at seeing me vanishes. He is the first on his feet, although I shake my head when he tries to take her body from me.

  ‘Oh shit,’ he says.

  Rachel starts crying.

  ‘You,’ I tell her, ‘get back to your post.’

  I might as well have slapped her because she flinches anyway.

  Dropping to my knees, I roll Franc onto the ground and see grit glue itself to the stickiness of her jacket. If she’d died in battle, it would be different. But my corporal is dead because some fuck blew up our plane. I am going to find out why. Then I’m going to find out who. And then I’m going to kill that person, slowly.

  ‘We bury her here,’ I say.

  ‘Sir . . .’

  ‘Got a problem with that?’

  As Neen steps back, his face closes down. ‘Something you should see first, sir.’ Grabbing a branch from the fire, he waves it back and forth until it bursts into flames. Then he turns and heads into the cave.

  Shil and Haze are sitting in darkness.

  ‘Haze found it,’ she says.

  ‘Behind that,’ says Haze. The wall he points at looks like every other one in this place, yellow and dry enough to crumble.

  They don’t know she’s dead, I realize.

  ‘Touch it,’ says Haze.

  I am tired, Franc’s blood is on my hands and I am out of patience.

  ‘Cut the shit,’ I tell him. Scooping up a pebble, Haze lobs it at the wall. It passes through as if the wall weren’t there.

  ‘You took a look behind?’

  Haze hesitates, not knowing what to answer. ‘Stairs,’ he says finally. ‘And lights. I didn’t climb all the way.’

  The lights start after twenty paces. It goes: walk-through wall, one twist of stairs into darkness, and then little glow bulbs that hang from the ceiling, giving off a greenish light. I’ve seen them before, on Paradise, the prison planet where General Jaxx sent me once as a joke.

  The steps are worn enough to tell me the tunnelling isn’t recent. And the glow bulbs, that come on as Neen and I get near and turn off as we leave, tell me there’s a power source somewhere.

  While most of my crew huddle for warmth round a fire made from roots, in a cave on some godforsaken planet settled by ex-humans, there is a power source strong enough to run chameleon camouflage and light a spiral of stairs.

  It does nothing for my temper.

  ‘Go back,’ I tell Neen. ‘Get the others.’

  ‘And Franc?’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Having saluted, he slips away.

  I sit so long that the light above me switches itself off, and remains off until Neen and the others return.

  We climb in silence.

  My old lieutenant would tell me the lights are saying something deep, about life, light, darkness, and death. But then he was full of shit.

  We climb, and keep climbing.

  The air gets warm and the steps become ceramic. There is paint on the walls now, and a door that looks new. At least, it looks recently replaced, because the metal frame around it is dark and pitted, while the door itself is shiny.

  It is unlocked.

  There’s carpet on the other side.

  ‘Take point,’ I tell Neen. ‘And take this.’

  He catches the distress pistol from the plane. As I watch, he breaks it open and drops out the flare, checks the barrel and slots the flare back into place. He toggles a safety switch, and then snaps the pistol shut. He does all this quietly and I notice his breathing has steadied.

  Neen is a natural. That’s why he’s my sergeant.

  Not his fault I’m angry, not theirs . . .

  And I will keep my fury in check around them, provided they shut up, do what they’re told, and have the sense to stay out of my way.

  ‘Me second,’ I say, thinking through the order. ‘Haze third, Rachel fourth, Shil takes rear.’ One less thing for Neen to worry about if we hit trouble. And we are going to, because I’m going to make damn sure we do.

  ‘Take Franc,’ I tell Rachel.

  Lifting the body onto her shoulder, Rachel climbs in stubborn silence. At the next landing, Haze offers to swap. Rachel shakes her head and he doesn’t ask again. When we near the top, I know what I am going to find.

  This has U/Free written all over it.

  ‘Ready?’

  Neen nods.

  ‘On my count.’

  I hold
up five fingers and reach for the door, not quite touching the handle. When the count hits two, I close my hand round the knob and twist.

  The door is unlocked. There’s no alarm.

  Their arrogance is staggering.

  Zero . . .

  At my nod I throw open the door and Neen goes through, pistol drawn and sweeping the room. Three people, two men and one woman. The woman I already know, the men I hate on sight. ‘See,’ says one. ‘Told you.’

  The other smiles.

  Only to lose his smile when Neen stamps towards him.

  Hooking out the man’s feet, my sergeant shoulder-slams him to the ground and drops on top of him. When Neen stops moving, his distress pistol is tight against the stranger’s right eye.

  ‘Move,’ says Neen. ‘And I’ll fuck you.’

  As the woman steps forward, Neen tightens his trigger finger.

  She stops, turns to me, saying, ‘Sven, enough. You know there’s—’

  ‘Whose idea was this?’

  Her gaze catches mine and Paper Osamu’s smile falters.

  ‘It was my idea,’ says the man behind her. ‘Jaxx said you were resourceful. I wanted to be certain.’ He’s tall, dressed in one of those long robes the U/Free wear to impress lesser races with their casual restraint.

  ‘My corporal is dead,’ I tell him.

  He looks at me, glances at Paper. ‘What’s a corporal?’ he asks.

  A single step takes me to where he stands. He’s fast, but I’m faster, and I do this for a living. Head-butting him, I grab his skull and twist until his neck is just short of breaking point and he shits himself.

  ‘A corporal comes above a trooper and below a sergeant,’ I say. ‘Have you any fucking idea how hard it is to find someone that good with a knife?’

  Of course he hasn’t.

  ‘Fuckwit.’

  The last thing he sees is my smile.

  After he’s dead, I boot him anyway. My first breaks ribs, the second ruptures his heart. I have no idea what the third does, other than land with a wet thud.

  ‘Sven . . .‘

  ‘Shut it.’

  Paper Osamu opens her mouth to protest and closes it when I jab my finger at Franc’s body. ‘You did that.’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Take this,’ I tell Rachel, tossing her a blade. ‘If she opens her mouth again, cut her throat.’

  ‘My pleasure, sir.’