Death's Head (23 page)

Franc, Neen, and Shil understand. They look more nervous by the second, and if not for the walk back through the camp, I think they’d be fading into the darkness as discreetly as possible.

“Is Colonel Nuevo here?”

One of the guards rips his attention away from the smartly dressed lieutenant. He grins at the state of my uniform, and then remembers where he is. He nods, uncertain how to address me.

“Would you tell him that Second Lieutenant Sven Tveskoeg is ready when he is.”

“Sven…” The colonel is dressed for combat, full body armor and a helmet, with its visor tipped up. A pulse pistol sits in a holster on his hip. “Any chance of this working?”

“Whatever it takes, sir,” I say. “That’s what we’ll do.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Where did you capture it, sir?”

“In the woods.” He points toward a row of distant scrub. “One of our forward patrols…” He glances behind me and sees the others. “Who are these?”

“My unit.”

His gaze skims across the three troopers and he sighs. “Are those Death’s Head patches?”

“Yes, sir…These men are auxiliaries.”

He stares at me, eyes almost mild. “I didn’t know we had auxiliaries in this regiment, Sven. It must be new.”

“Only in the section that talks to ferox, sir.”

The colonel laughs. “Oh, fuck it,” he says. “Keep them.”

I try not to wonder what would have happened to the troopers if he’d disapproved.

I SEND SHIL
and Franc for firewood, a case of incendiaries, and anything else that looks flammable. And then, as the guards step back, I show Neen how to pry the core from an incendiary shell and extract its ferric oxide, aluminum, and magnesium. As instructed, he shreds the mix over the sticks that the others are beginning to pile around the pod.

Shil and Franc bring broken boxes, half a thorn bush, a crate of military-issue fire lighters—something I didn’t even know existed—and an old door complete with rusting handle, hinges, and wooden frame.

“Where did you find that?”

“A shack,” Franc says. “Behind the trees.”

“Tear it apart,” I tell her.

It’s not an order she likes. The farm is poor and badly positioned, working land that is obviously waterlogged for most of the year. Its shabbiness probably reminds Franc of home. All the same, she does what she’s told and does it efficiently, and that’s what matters.

Shil rips apart a straw mattress and spreads its contents as kindling. A table and three chairs she stacks on one side for later.

I’m not sure how long it’s going to take to give the ferox back its body heat, but I want the beast vaguely content before anything else happens. Always assuming its need for heat isn’t tied to a matching need for sunlight, because if it is the colonel’s plans are fucked and I’m going to be the one to tell him.

“You,” I tell Shil. “Light it.”

She comes forward and sets a flame to the straw.

The powder from the incendiary flares brightly, and damp wood spits and hisses until it is dry enough to catch by itself. Another five minutes and I decide it must be getting warm inside the pod.

“Open it,” I tell the guards.

A dozen men with pulse rifles stand around the pod as a technician tries to work out how to unglue the pod without being burned. In the end I take his cutting tool, step across the flames, and cut the glue myself.

“You ready?” I ask the riflemen.

Their sergeant nods. “Yes, sir.”

“Right, then this is how it works…I’ll hammer on the glass when I’m ready to leave. See me before that and the ferox is using me as a shield.”

“They don’t have the intelligence,” says a voice. It’s the first sign in half an hour that we haven’t gotten rid of Lieutenant Uffingham.

I ignore him.

THE BEAST IS
injured. A gash has been opened across its face, and blood is matted into the fur beneath its throat armor. Our fire has warmed the pod, but less than I’ve been expecting. Knocking several times on the wall, I lift the glass.

“More heat.”

Neen nods.

As I duck back inside, Franc and Shil begin smashing up wooden chairs to throw onto the fire. A minute later the ferox turns its head and slowly focuses its eyes on my face.

Lips draw back and the beast opens its mouth to reveal yellowing canines. One of them is broken, and human hair hangs from the jagged stump.

“At least you’ve already eaten.”

Dark eyes stare back.

So I twist the handle of my laser knife and sear the back of my hand, trying not to wince. And as the pain fades, I catch a burst of aimless fear, tied to crippling cold and a desire for death.

What?
it asks.

“Sven.”

What Sven?

“Sven lived with ferox.”

The beast opens its eyes in disbelief, so I send it a memory of the caves and Youngster.

The fire outside is raising the temperature in here close to desert heat. This wakes the ferox even further, although it also sets the animal’s wounds bleeding as warmth draws blood back to the surface. The pain, when it reaches me, practically knocks me back on my heels.

Almost gone,
it says.

Remembering this isn’t Youngster, I resist the urge to nod and think
Yes
instead. The beast, indeed, is almost gone.

Snakeskull did this.

“What?”

Got sick.

“You got sick?” I ask.

But it’s locked itself into a loop involving a tunnel and cold water, remembering intensely and repeatedly the same twenty or thirty footsteps. There’s something unsettling about sharing an alien’s final moments, not least because bits of the beast’s memory are bleeding into my own thoughts as it prepares to die.

“Wait,” I tell it. “Who got sick?”

Snakeskull,
it says.
Had to guard…Hurt us.

There are too many gaps between its thoughts, too much pain. All the beast can still remember is walking through a tunnel, and it was dying even then.

Death,
it demands.

“Deep rest, and a better life next time.”

My dagger takes it through armor plating and skewers the heart beneath. I feel the beast’s death and it locks my throat. So either I’m getting soft, or it’s one of those glitches I get before adjusting to a new set of rules.

I make a soldier sign over his body from habit, and then hammer several times on the side of the pod. Just to make sure there are no mistakes, I hammer again, and, even after that, the guards still keep their pulse rifles pointed at me as I clamber over the edge, letting the glass lid bang shut behind me.

“Fuck,” someone says.

Which is when I realize I’m covered in blood.

“You okay?”

It’s Colonel Nuevo.

“Yes, sir,” I say. “Unfortunately the ferox is dead.”

“Unfortunately?”

“It didn’t finish answering my questions.”

“But you definitely questioned it?”

I ask his permission to talk in private.

His guards fall back and so do my four troopers. The fire around the pod is now just ashes, and the moon has shifted across the sky. It makes me realize just how long I’ve been inside.

“Snakeskull,” I say. “Does that mean anything to you?”

The colonel begins to shake his head, and then hesitates midshake. “Could be,” he says, but he’s talking to himself. “Braids and snakes. Sounds possible…You ever seen a silverhead?”

I’m back in the conversation. “No, sir.”

“Metal braids for hair. Might look like snakes to a ferox.” He hesitates. “We’re talking about something the ferox said, right?”

“Demanded guarding.”

“The Enlightened are psychic,” says the colonel. “If you can talk to ferox, maybe they can talk to ferox.”

The Uplifted number fewer than us, but their technology is good enough to trade with the U/Free, who let us fight each other, probably hoping we’ll destroy each other and solve the problem that way.

The United Free administer 85 percent of the known galaxy. If you believe their propaganda, the U/Free live in a state of crime-free bliss, spared the trauma of illness and hunger, able to reach their true potential over the span of a dozen lives. As they keep telling us, they’re really disappointed we won’t join them.

Someday the U/Free will choose between the Enlightened and the Octovians. At the moment they sit it out, proclaiming their sadness at our childish inability to make peace with each other. And in between expressing their sadness, they buy steppewolf furs, wild-side implants, and obscenely sized diamonds from long-dead star systems. Anything exotic, anything natural. Amber, comet ice to mix with cocktails, trinket boxes made from ferox shell.

I’ve just left a fortune in raw materials behind me.

“You’re scowling.”

The colonel is right, I am.

“Okay,” says Colonel Nuevo. “Snakeheads. What else did you discover?”

“It escaped from the Enlightened through a tunnel under the city’s defenses. It looked to me like a sewer.”

The colonel’s staring at me. “You could see into its mind?”

“I saw its memories.”

“So,” says Colonel Nuevo. “There’s a sewer.” Even in the half-light of the dying fire I can see the calculation in his eyes. “Tell me,” he says. “Just how good is that little group of yours?”

CHAPTER 29

S
HIL WON’T
meet my eyes, Franc gives a strained salute and excuses herself, and Haze hands me the SIG diabolo and turns away, before making himself turn back.

“It woke up.” He sounds upset and scared…and he’s staring everywhere but at the blood splattering my uniform.

“Woke up?”

“Yes, sir…So I reset it.”

“Reset what?”

“Its scan parameters.”

“You played with the settings on my gun?”

My voice is quiet, which scares him even more, and he’s right, because unless he comes up with a really good reason for messing with the SIG, I’m going to hurt him very badly indeed. I’ve seen soldiers get killed for less.

Taking a deep breath, Haze says, “I just stopped it draining quite so much power. I can restore the earlier settings, if that’s what you want.”

He’s bought himself a reprieve.

“Go on.”

“The combat chip was set to real time plus.”

“Which means what?”

Haze thinks I’m testing him. Actually, he might as well be talking another language.

“Five seconds absolute, fifteen high probable, two minutes high likely, and fifteen high possible; that’s a huge demand for any AI to carry. It looks like you were worried about…”

Haze hesitates, realizing what he’s just said.

“Don’t stop now,” I tell him.

“I mean,” he says, “you obviously expected a high-probability, high-impact event, set the AI accordingly, and then forgot to…”

Yeah, Haze just dug himself another hole.

NEEN IS THE
only one who remains with me as I strip off my combat armor, stuff handfuls of cold
Dylidae lagarto
meat into my mouth, and motion him to follow me down to the water’s edge.

“Keep guard,” I tell him.

Neen salutes. What’s worse, it looks like he means it.

The water is colder than earlier, and the mud is sticky beneath my feet; tiny predators nip at my legs and pond weed drags at my ankles like fingers. I’m not superstitious. Well, no more than the next soldier, but this night is leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

Unless that’s the kyp.

Idiot,
I tell myself. All battles end with this feeling.

A scar on my knee is aching, as it does when it gets cold. The cut was into bone, a saber slash so powerful it embedded a blade in my leg that had to be wrenched free. Weirdly, the very viciousness of the blow saved my life. While the tribesman was still struggling to retrieve his sword, I put a knife through his heart.

Karbonne feels a long way from here.

Adapt or die, adapt and die…the options aren’t great, but one is definitely better than the other. As I climb from the water, the thoughts crowding my head are gone. The ferox is just a beast, its memories of death washed clean. I toss Neen my armor to scrub, struggle into the sodden trousers, and return to our fire. A minute or so later steam is rising off me like a saucepan on the boil.

“Right,” I say. “Tell me.”

“What, sir?”

“Where the others are. What’s troubling them?”

My sergeant’s face goes blank.

“Neen.
That’s an order.
”

He looks at me, at the gun I’ve just drawn from its holster, and at the Death’s Head dagger driven into the dirt by my feet.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

My laugh surprises him. I can’t remember the last time anyone used that phrase and actually meant it. “Speak away.”

“You tortured a ferox to death, sir. You tortured it so badly you made it talk.”

“Fuckers can’t talk.”

“Everyone says this one did.”

“Everyone?”

He gestures at the camp around us. It is quiet, at least where we are. All the goodwill gained by sharing the alligator meat is gone in a single rumor.

“You’re a Death’s Head auxiliary,” I tell him. “You don’t worry what other people think. You worry what I think. Do you understand?”