Death's Head: Maximum Offence Read online

Their observation room is large, floored with marble that is warm to the touch. It has these weird walls with a gap at the top and bottom, so it looks like they are floating.

  Unless they are floating, of course.

  Vast screens show live feeds of the wilderness outside. One is a satellite shot, taken from high space. Seems the rest of this planet isn’t much better than the bit we’ve already seen.

  ‘Sven . . .’ Paper’s voice is calm. As if talking to a child.

  ‘Rachel.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘What did I say?’

  The U/Free ambassador flinches as Rachel grabs her head, yanks it back and puts a knife to her neck.

  ‘You can’t,’ says the man Neen’s guarding.

  ‘Actually,’ I tell him, ‘I can.’

  ‘Sven,’ says Paper, as Rachel steadies her blade. ‘Listen. We can bring your trooper back.’

  Rachel keeps the edge tight against Paper’s throat and wraps her fingers tighter into Paper’s hair to tell the U/Free she is not out of trouble yet.

  ‘And him?’ I say, nodding to the man I killed.

  ‘Morgan?’ says Paper. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Guess there’s a downside to everything.’

  Paper doesn’t think it’s funny. But then I don’t mean it as a joke. Moreover, I still haven’t decided whether I’m going to let her live. We’ve been played with, fucked over and I have killed one of my own. There never was an ammo dump to destroy. This isn’t even the real Hekati.

  I look at Paper, and she smiles.

  It is a sweet smile, despite the fingers tight in her hair and the knife at her throat. It reminds me why I don’t trust the U/Free. And that reminds me that Ms Osamu asked for us personally, by name. A request from a U/Free ambassador is a command from anyone else.

  ‘The general knew Morgan wanted to test us?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘That someone would get hurt.’

  ‘Next time,’ I say, kicking the body, ‘tell him to listen.’

  Chapter 7

  PAPER OSAMU LIVES ON THE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVENTH floor of a glass and carbon tower in a city called Letogratz. The city is five times the size of Farlight. She lives in its most expensive area, with a view of a vast harbour leading to a curving horizon beyond. Her windows are huge, except the window in her bedroom. This is beyond huge. It’s a wall made entirely of glass. Far below lies a promenade lined with golden palm trees and scarlet bushes that curl themselves up into tight balls when darkness comes in.

  Out on the harbour, jet boats skim the waves like flying fish. They don’t seem to be actually doing anything except looking pretty. Apparently, that is enough in this city.

  Paper dragons ride the updraught beyond Paper’s window.

  Kids, I think. Until I look closer. Adults hang below their vast paper wings, swooping and turning above the promenade. The more daring of the kite riders skim close to the walls of Paper’s building or navigate the gap between where we are and the building beside us.

  It’s a narrow gap, and I don’t get it.

  No other civilization is this rich. Yet they live in quarters half the size of a kitchen cupboard at Golden Memories, and waste their days playing with children’s toys. If they are so rich, why don’t they give themselves more space, and do something interesting?

  They have two thirds of the galaxy to explore. Unless it’s three quarters. General Jaxx told me once, but I wasn’t listening. The end of one spiral is split between the metalheads and us. The U/Free own the rest. Apart from a handful of minor systems claimed by maniacs, cargo cults, and self-anointed messiahs. No one pays them much attention until things get out of hand. Then the U/Free go in and we suddenly have one less star.

  I ask Paper how much the U/Free rule these days.

  She tells me they rule nothing. They are simply a commonwealth. So I ask her how much of the galaxy they’re busy not ruling and she laughs.

  Rolling onto her stomach, she wiggles her bottom at me.

  ‘Five sixths.’

  ‘That’s more than three quarters?’

  She sighs. So I slap her arse.

  And when it’s pink enough, I spit on my fingers and watch her nod in a mirrored headboard. If I don’t want to watch her in that, there is a looking glass on each of the side walls and one glued to the ceiling overhead. She looks good in all of them.

  ‘Slowly,’ she says.

  I take this as proof she is OK with what I have in mind.

  A strange way for her to say sorry; but then Paper Osamu is a strange woman. She’s a strange person, full stop. In a city full of strange people. If getting naked is how she wants to say sorry who am I to complain?

  ‘Shit,’ she says.

  Actually, she says it three times.

  By then I am almost inside, and she’s begun chewing the back of her hand. So I pull out and she swears at me, tells me no way am I going to put that in there again. She’s wrong. A while later, she looks round.

  ‘Have you thought more about what I said last time?’

  Something about asylum? She doesn’t mean that. ‘Not really,’ I say, because this seems best.

  Paper Osamu sighs. ‘It’s dangerous,’ she tells me. ‘It’s going to kill you.’

  Ah, got it now.

  The U/Free don’t like soft tek. At least not when someone else builds it. I wait for her to repeat her earlier warning. This she does, word for word. It’s dangerous. It’s going to kill me. I haven’t been trained to use it.

  Basically, a kyp has set up home in my throat. A kyp’s an illegal symbiont. It can be used to talk direct to AIs, bend a few physical rules. A short cut to the voodoo shit Haze does.

  Paper tells me it is lethal.

  ‘So remember,’ she adds. ‘We don’t want you using it.’

  On this mission is what she means. She’s leading up to something. Talking about our mission would be the obvious thought; but that is way too obvious, although it takes me a while to realize that. She’s talking around the mission.

  We start with where.

  Hekati.

  This isn’t a planet at all. It’s a small ring world. Once, it belonged to an asteroid cult. Currently, it’s deserted. When Paper says deserted she means of anyone who matters. Descendants of the original miners still scrabble through slag heaps; also squatters, freeloaders, exiles and illegals.

  My kind of people. I’m glad Paper mentions this. I thought she meant empty.

  ‘When are we leaving?’

  A scowl says she is getting to that bit. ‘Within the week . . . You’ll get two days’ warning.’

  ‘And what are we going to be doing when we get there?’

  ‘I haven’t been told,’ she says.

  Paper’s lying.

  So I pull out, stand us both on the tiles and press down until she begins to bend at the knee. Later, as she scrubs her lips with the back of one hand, she looks up at me with her perfect eyes and does that smile.

  ‘You know,’ she says, ‘Morgan believes you’re a psychopath.’

  ‘You brought him back?’ She must hear something in my voice. Because her face tightens.

  ‘Of course I brought him back.’

  ‘Before Franc?’

  ‘He still has to approve your mission,’ says Paper. ‘If he doesn’t, there’s no point bringing her back at all.’

  Chapter 8

  AS THE DOORS OPEN, THE SMALL LAKE BEYOND PARTS IN TIME to stop water flooding the elevator’s only occupant to the waist.

  That’s me.

  Fuck knows what holds the koi pond back. Perhaps a force field produced by the elevator itself. A path winds between strategically placed rocks, white flowers and huge green leaves. It wanders gently, so I ignore it.

  Taking the direct route, I climb three steps at the pond’s edge and ignore a woman in a silk dressing gown hand-feeding crane-flies to a fish the size of my arm. Something about her smile annoys me.

 
; ‘Good afternoon,’ she repeats, as if I didn’t hear first time. ‘Will we see you at tomorrow’s party?’

  I ignore that too.

  ‘It will be fun,’ she says. ‘Parties always are.’

  Stopping, I turn to stare; then nod at an insect wriggling in her hand. ‘Isn’t that cruel?’

  As if I care.

  ‘Oh no,’ she says, sounding shocked. ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Must be.’

  She looks at me.

  Maybe she is trying to work out if I’m simple. Alternatively, maybe she’s wondering if I’m mocking her. Unless she’s wondering if I belong in the atrium of Paper Osamu’s building after all. In which case, we both know the answer to that.

  ‘They’re not sentient,’ she says, smiling when I scowl. ‘No feelings,’ she explains. ‘No thoughts.’

  ‘Maybe not in the sense you understand.’

  ‘Oh no.’ She shakes her head firmly. ‘Not in any sense at all.’

  I leave the woman feeding brain-dead insects to fat fish and stamp the hundred paces between Paper’s building and the tower where we’re based. Our building is not as grand as hers. Nevertheless, it is still taller than any building in Farlight.

  ‘Your ears,’ says the lift. ‘Can I recommend . . . ?’

  ‘Seventy-sixth floor,’ I tell it.

  ‘Yes . . . Now, about your ears.’ Apparently, most U/Free wear grommets. It can order these for me now.

  ‘Just take me up.’

  ‘But you have a headache.’

  ‘And you’re making it worse.’

  When it starts again on the ear modification, I punch a fist-shaped bruise in its shiny metal side, then threaten to rip open its service panel, snap the wires and piss in its fuse box.

  The lift tells me violence never solved anything.

  Shows what it knows. And that reminds me why I miss my SIG-37. You can get a decent argument going with that gun. Only, the SIG’s back at Death’s Head HQ. There are good reasons. At least, that is what the general says.

  Paper Osamu thinks the gun encourages my tendencies.

  Since, presumably, she is employing me for my tendencies, I cannot see the problem. Kicking the elevator on my way out makes it blink. All the lights go out, come back on, go out and come back on again. It occurs to me that maybe no one else kicks machinery round here.

  ‘Violence never—’ It starts to say.

  So I kick it again. ‘Go,’ I tell it. ‘While your fuses still function.’

  It drops away in silence.

  All the buildings in Letogratz follow the same pattern. They are hollow, three-sided, and built around a courtyard that is open to the sky. The courtyards need no roof, because a force field holds back the rain. This begins at 3.28 every afternoon and finishes exactly forty minutes later.

  Ten minutes before the rain starts, the sky goes dark. Thunder comes first, then lightning, then rain so heavy it glazes the walls of every building before it runs to the ground and disappears into storm drains. Ten minutes after the rain stops, the sky turns blue again.

  ———

  The party begins at dusk. A messenger arrives to say we are required. He says invited, but that is not what he means. He talks to my sergeant, because Rachel is busy stitching my good hand. I put it through a window.

  How was I to know Paper lied about their glass being unbreakable? It has been a long day, and I’ve wasted most of it trying to find out why she will not return my calls. It should be simple: I tap a wall and ask it to connect me.

  Works anywhere the U/Free are.

  Technically, this is impossible.

  According to Haze, the galaxy is x light years across by x light years thick. So messages take whole lifetimes and longer to go anywhere. But the U/Free have ships that tear holes in space and post themselves through the rips.

  That is impossible as well.

  I’ve been tapping walls all day. Until tapping turns into punching. None of the walls bothers to tell me why a connection to Paper Osamu isn’t possible. My temper is not helped by a conversation I hear on returning to our living room, fist bandaged.

  ‘It’s obvious,’ says Shil.

  ‘No way.’ Neen sounds certain.

  ‘Neen,’ says Shil, ‘grow up.’ She shouldn’t say that, even if he is her brother. ‘And now she’s dumped him.’

  My sergeant shakes his head.

  ‘Serves Sven right.’

  ‘I thought you liked him?’

  ‘Neen . . .‘

  ‘Just saying.’

  ‘Well don’t.’ Shil stamps over to a window and stares out at the rain. When she turns back, she sees me in the doorway. She is wondering how much I heard.

  ‘Where’s Franc?’

  ‘Still resting, sir.’

  I haven’t seen her yet. Although we’d expected her this morning, it’s early afternoon before she is released for tests. What tests no one tells us. She will be good as new is all they’ll say.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ says Morgan, when I ask for more information.

  Perhaps threatening to break his neck again was a bad move. I mean, how was I to know he and Paper are married . . . And while I’m thinking this, a patch of living-room wall goes fuzzy and Paper finally returns my call. She’s naked and Morgan stands behind her. He’s naked too.

  They’re smiling.

  ‘You were trying to get hold of me?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘We won’t be making that party.’

  Morgan’s gaze flicks past me. When he speaks, it’s to whisper something in his wife’s ear. She nods.

  ‘It starts in five minutes.’

  ‘Paper,’ I say, ‘we’re not—’

  Irritation flicks across her face. Maybe this is not a discussion she wants to have in front of the Aux. Or perhaps it’s Morgan. He has his hands on her hips, and he is standing close behind her. I don’t want to know what he is doing. Except I already do.

  We all do.

  ‘Get a room,’ mutters Neen.

  Morgan laughs. The U/Free are different to us. How different we are all coming to realize.

  ‘You should get changed,’ says Paper.

  ‘So should you.’

  She smiles. ‘I’m wearing a gown. You’ve got all that braid.’

  ‘All that . . . ?’

  ‘Jaxx had your uniforms sent over.’

  Paper says this as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. As if General Jaxx shipping some lieutenant’s uniform for a party was normal.

  ‘Sven,’ she says, ‘the general told us you’d be happy to attend any functions necessary. After all, you’re here on a cultural exchange.’

  First I’ve heard of it.

  ‘Do call Jaxx to check,’ says Morgan. ‘If you want.’

  ———

  Neen’s puzzled. It looks like his jacket, but it feels wrong. So he turns up the lights for a closer look and realizes it is only pretending to be his jacket. Someone has taken standard-issue battledress and re-created it in spider’s silk and fine wool.

  The changes do not end there.

  Braid edges his collar; his belt is leather not webbing.

  As for our Death’s Head patches . . . Franc cut those from the skin of a cold-water alligator on the marshes outside Ilseville, the night we formed the Aux. It seems longer ago than it is.

  The patches remain, but someone has tidied the edges and wrapped them in silver. A new row of stripes decorates Neen’s left sleeve.

  They’re the real thing.

  Death’s Head official issue. Sergeants, for the use of . . .

  ‘Shit,’ says Shil. She looks at her brother, uncertain whether to be upset or pleased. A dagger fills Neen’s hand; it’s plain black, with a silver pommel. That is official issue too.

  Franc is here now. We’re all pretending that’s normal. She looks like Franc and sounds like Franc and even smells like Franc. I know that, because I get close enough to check. Her face looks the same, as does her body, what I can see of
it.

  Only her eyes are different. They’re terrified.

  She has been brought back from the dead. No one asked her if that was what she wanted. How could they? So we’re ignoring it, she’s ignoring it, and I’m letting Shil and Rachel fuss over the new uniforms like children with a toy-box.

  ‘Let’s unpack the rest,’ Rachel says.

  Franc has proper stripes for a corporal. And everyone has a battle ribbon, a slash of red and white. Must be for Ilseville, because it cannot be for anything else. We are obviously claiming that as a victory now.

  My uniform is last. It looks like before.

  Silver collar bars show my rank, an Obsidian Cross hangs on its black silk ribbon; a run of silver braid falls to the left of the jacket. Although the braid is better quality than it was. The jacket is less ornate than Neen’s, but that is how we work. The uniform General Jaxx wears is simpler still.

  My boots are new, though, their heels higher. This is unnecessary, as I am already taller than everyone else.

  ‘Sir,’ says Shil, nodding to a roll of cloth. ‘Think this might be yours.’ Her voice is way too neutral.

  It’s a cloak. Staff officers, for the use of . . .

  Staff officers? Why not just shoot me and have done with it.

  The outside of the cloak is black, and what I can see of the silk lining is red. A silver skull on one side of a floppy collar grins at a skull on the other side. A metal chain loops between their teeth.

  ‘So you,’ says a voice.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tacky, tawdry, tasteless.’

  As I shake out the cloak, Neen ducks and something flicks across the room and bounces off an opposite wall. I know what it is before it lands. There aren’t many weapons that can swear like that.

  Very carefully, Haze picks up the SW SIG-37.

  ‘Haze . . .’

  ‘Just fetching it for you, sir.’

  ‘Clips emptied,’ protests my gun. ‘Molested by U/Free experts‘ — it puts particular emphasis on this word — ‘then thrown across the room by a moron.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Good to see you too.’

  It snorts.

  So I threaten to introduce it to an elevator.

  The SIG-37 snorts some more.

  Its fold-down wire stock is gone. Its pistol grips are mother of pearl rather than neoprene. Chrome glints where a slate-grey slide should be, and a small ruby replaces the original red dot sight.